Joonkoo Park, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Associate
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience
Duke University

email: joonkoo -dot- park -at- duke -dot- edu
phone: +1 919 668 0437
fax: +1 919 681 0815
address:
  B104 LSRC Building. Research Drive
  Duke University, NC 27708


Research

To be updated!


Publications

Journal Articles

Conference Presentations


Education

I earned a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Michigan in August 2011 under the supervision of Dr. Thad Polk. My primary research at Michigan was focused on the neural architecture and mechanisms underlying high-level vision. Using behavioral as well as functional and structural brain imaging methods (MRI, fMRI, EEG), I studied the experiential effects on the neural substrates of letter/number recognition, and the behavioral correlates of neural representations of visual categories in younger and older adults. My secondary research topic was in developing mathematical and statistical methods for analyzing neurophysiological and neuroimaging data. I received Master of Science in Psychology along the way, and Master of Arts in Statistics through a dual-degree program at the Department of Statistics.

I received Master of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in August 2005 from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. HCI introduced me to the art of studying human cognition, after which I entered the field of cognitive neuroscience.

I graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Seoul National University (entered in 1998). I was specifically interested in human factors and ergonomics, which eventually led me towards cognitive neuroscience.


Teaching

Intro to Cognitive Psychology (Psych 240)

Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) with Professor Bill Gehring in Winter 2010 at the University of Michigan. Led three discussion sections with a total of 75 undergraduate students.

Advanced Statistical Methods (Psych 614)

Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) with Professor Pam Davis-Kean in Winter 2009 at the University of Michigan. Led discussion sections, gave mini-lectures, and graded assignments and exams in a graduate level statistics course covering fundamentals of multivariate statistics.

Advanced Statistical Methods (Psych 613)

Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) with Professor Kai Cortina in Fall 2008 at the University of Michigan. Led discussion sections, gave mini-lectures, and graded assignments and exams in a graduate level statistics course covering fundamentals of descriptive/inferential statistics.

Intro to Cognitive Psychology (Psych 240)

Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) with Professor Thad Polk in Fall 2007 at the University of Michigan. Led three discussion sections with a total of 80 undergraduate students.


Awards and Honors


Professional Membership


Professional Experience

I was a Research Scientist from September 2005 to August 2006 at the Intelligence and Interaction Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology. Although I was there for a relatively short time, I initiated a project called the Generic Interaction Methods and worked with great people with various different backgrounds to design a simple ubiquitous control method for home electronics and appliances. I hold two Korean Patents (#1007393800000 and #1008362220000) from this work.

Between my undergraduate graduation and my new life at CMU, I worked as a research intern for a short time (Jan 2004 ~ Apr 2004) at Accenture Korea, a business consulting firm. I researched and analyzed financial data of pharmaceutical companies and venture capitals in a business strategy project.

I served 26 months of military service in the Republic of Korea Army from November 2000 to Jan 2003. As a KATUSA (Korean Augmentation to the United States Army), I was assigned to the 17th Aviation Brigade, 8th US Army. I worked as a tactical air traffic controller and participated in major military exercises. As a tactical unit, my section spent a lot of times out in the field, usually up at mountain tops. Up there, we used to set up tents, camouflage, and antennas, and talked to aircrafts in shifts. Later in my service, I was also elected as the Company Senior KATUSA who took charge of all the other KATUSA soldiers in the company.


Personal

Photography

Photography is one big part of my life. I often like to explore busy streets with my rangefinder and enjoy taking street photos. The reason that I favor street photos is that they are not staged. I like things that are pure and natural. When you look around people, buildings, cars, and many other things on the street, you will notice that every single thing exists to serve its own purpose and in fact nothing is artificial, yet together they form an amazingly wonderful scene with many stories. Good street photos are very self-restrained and unartificial, yet they convey an extremely interesting story worth a thousand words. For instance, when you look at some pieces of my favorite photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson or Robert Frank, you will feel that interesting and meaningful stories behind a critical moment of an unstaged scenery coming to you.

With a hope that one day I will open my own photography exhibition, my rangefinder and I are waiting on critical moments of our everyday lives. Here are some of my photographs, but more can be found at my personal web gallery (as well as foodlery; see below) joonkoo.com.

Food

Eating is another big joy of my life. People often ask me how I am able to control my weight while I am overly fond of food. Although I may not eat a lot, I really enjoy tasting well-prepared fresh food. I usually like simple food made of pure, natural ingredients. You should be able to tell this from my favorite foods which are boiled fresh shrimp (this is actually a Chinese dish), steamed homemade tofu. But I basically like any kind of food that I can taste the freshness and richness of each of the ingredients. I should say I am quite picky on restaurants, since I like to have Jajangmyon (a Korean dish of bean-paste noodles) at one restaurant which serves one of the best Jajangmyon in Seoul but average Tangsooyook, while I like to eat Tangsooyook (a Korean style sweet and sour pork) at another place which has the best Tangsooyook but mediocre Jajangmyon. This is very much like eating soup at one restaurant and bread at another.

Spending most of my childhood and high school years in the greater Chinese region, I am very accustomed to various styles of Chinese food. Steamed grouper, Dongpo Rou, and dimsum dishes are a few of my favorites. I am also very fond of Japanese ramen - especially Hakata style dontoksu ramen. Its richness of broth is incomparable to any other soup dishes. Although my favorite bread depends on occasions, but my all-time favorite is freshly baked Italian ciabatta. I keep a list of recommended restaurants in my personal web foodlery (as well as gallery; see above) joonkoo.com, but unfortunately the list is currently limited to restaurants in Korea only. Since some time ago, I started home baking bread - starting from French baguettes. Some batches have been really wonderful, but I am trying hard to improve the consistency in my baguette quality.

Language

Korean is my native language, but I learned to speak Chinese (Mandarin) and English when I was growing up in various different cities including Taipei, Hong Kong, and Beijing. I had formal education in English at English speaking schools such as International School of Beijing, and I learned colloquial Chinese outside of school. As I rarely speak Chinese these days, I am unfortunately losing it, but I should keep it up so that I can order some authentic dishes in Chinese restaurants!


Links

Here are some links to useful external resources and to some of my own code.

fMRI Resources

Statistical Machine Learning Resources


 

* Last updated on Jun 23, 2011
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