• Date: November 24th, Monday, 2025, 15:30 – 17:30
• Location: Youngone Hall (Room 210), SNUAC (Bldg. 101)

Presenter: Soonjo Hwang (Anna O. Stake Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Nebraska Medical Center)
Moderator: Sung Yong Kang (Director, CSAS)

While modern medicine has made remarkable progress, mental-health problems have grown so serious that they now generate measurable economic losses. In response, the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is exploring new biological approaches—known as RDoC—that move beyond the traditional symptom-based diagnoses of the DSM.

At the same time, therapeutic methods rooted in Indian contemplative traditions, such as meditation and breathwork, have become widely used in clinical settings. Programs like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) have become deeply integrated into everyday life, even through smartphone apps. As of March 2021, there were nearly 20,000 academic publications on “mindfulness and meditation,” with numbers rising sharply since the mid-2000s.

However, the historical and cultural contexts of these practices remain poorly understood. For instance, although MBSR is often described as rooted in “Buddhist” traditions, it is in fact a product of the modernist Buddhist reform movement in twentieth-century Myanmar. India’s own traditions have developed diverse healing systems over more than two millennia, yet this rich heritage has not been adequately recognized.

In response, Professors Soonjo Hwang (University of Nebraska Medical Center) and Sungyong Kang (Seoul National University) are launching an international collaborative research project. The Korean team will reassess the historical development of Indian healing traditions through close analysis of primary sources, while the U.S. team will examine the neuroscientific effects of these practices using tools such as fMRI. A small pilot study is already underway, a related paper is currently under review, and a research proposal has been submitted to the U.S. NIH. In connection with this project, the Center for South Asian Studies at SNUAC will host a workshop. We warmly invite your interest and participation.

Dr. Hwang graduated from Yonsei University College of Medicine and completed his psychiatry residency and board certification at Severance Hospital. He subsequently completed a psychiatry residency and obtained U.S. board certification at New York Medical College/Westchester Medical Center. He received further training as a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, and completed a Clinical/Research Fellowship at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

He is currently the Director of Psychiatric Research and Co-Director of the Center for Advanced MRI at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. His research focuses on neuroimaging—particularly the use of functional MRI—to investigate pathological mechanisms underlying cognition, emotion, and behavior, with an emphasis on their neurobiological underpinnings. He conducts clinical studies applying diverse therapeutic interventions to both child/adolescent and adult psychiatric populations.

His related work has been published in numerous journals, including the American Journal of Psychiatry, and presented at academic societies such as the Society of Biological Psychiatry. He is currently leading multiple research projects supported by institutions such as the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, and South Korea’s Ministry of ICT/Science/Technology.