Professor Jae-Hyeok Cho of Jeonbuk National University (JBNU)'s Department of Software Engineering (specializing in artificial intelligence) is participating as the Principal Investigator (PI) in a National R&D Program titled "Development of Quantitative Evaluation Technology for Emotional-Affective Reactions to Virtual Convergence Content," supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Institute for Information and Communications Technology Planning and Evaluation (IITP). He will lead the development of core AI technologies for next-generation XR (eXtended Reality) environments.

The research aims to develop technologies that analyze users' emotions and behaviors in real time to evaluate the quality of XR content and deliver personalized services and content.

This large-scale industry–university–research collaboration project involves the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), JBNU, Hallym University, Korea University, Sejong University, Konkuk University, and private companies. The full lifecycle research will be carried out, from establishing an XR content quality assessment framework to developing emotion–affect recognition AI, personalized recommendation systems, and evaluation standardization technologies.

As JBNU's PI, Professor Cho is responsible for developing multimodal AI that reads emotions from facial expressions, gaze, voice, and similar cues, and for implementing an agent AI that recommends personalized content based on this information.

Specifically, he will carry out 'Development of Emotion–Affect Recognition AI Technology Based on General User Interfaces' and 'Development of Agent AI‑based Personalized UX and Content Recommendation Technologies' to realize user‑centered intelligent services.

Professor Cho's Agentic neuraL-Symbolic AI Lab (ALSA) research team is developing a neural‑symbolic, agentic‑mechanism‑based AI model to integratively analyze diverse users' multimodal data such as facial expressions, gaze, voice, and behavioral patterns.

Through this work, they are advancing technologies that can more precisely understand and predict users' emotional states.

In particular, unlike many existing emotion recognition AIs developed based on Western datasets, Professor Cho's team is simultaneously developing models that reflect distinctive emotion expression patterns of Koreans, giving the technology a differentiating advantage optimized for the domestic context.

At the same time, they are developing agent AI technologies that analyze users' emotional states and behavioral data in real time to recommend content tailored to individual preferences and characteristics.

This technology is expected to be used to enhance user immersion and satisfaction in XR environments and to provide a more natural and personalized user experience.

Professor Jae-Hyeok Cho said, 'AI technologies are evolving beyond merely analyzing user behavior toward understanding short‑ and long‑term emotions and intentions. We will continue our research to integrate emotion–affect recognition technologies with agent AI to contribute to the realization of user‑centered intelligent services.'

Meanwhile, Professor Cho conducts various AI convergence studies, including artificial intelligence, multimodal AI, agentic AI, and medical and environmental data analysis, and is working to develop next‑generation AI technologies applicable across industry and society.