MOTIVATION LETTER The MMCA International Researcher Residency Program 2026 asks what happens when a pharmacologist trained in computational modeling studies the cultural life of reward itself. My research career began with a question about dopamine: why do some memories become compulsive while others fade? Seven years of pharmaceutical training at the University of Ibadan and three years of independent computational work have produced the Conjunctive Consolidation Threshold model, a tripartite framework describing how dopaminergic reward prediction error, NMDAR-dependent long-term potentiation, and affective contrast jointly determine whether an experience becomes a compulsive memory. All five pre-registered hypotheses were confirmed through Bayesian MCMC calibration with 14 free parameters and literature-elicited priors drawn from a screen of 1,847 records. Three sole-authored preprints are under review at peer-reviewed journals including International Addiction Review and Psychoneuropharmacology Bulletin. This residency is an invitation to examine how contemporary Asian societies represent, regulate, and resist addiction. South Korea has one of the world's most sophisticated digital infrastructures and one of its highest rates of problematic internet and gaming use among young adults. The cultural response to this phenomenon, from government-mandated shutdown systems to artistic works exploring gamified desire, is a site where neuroscience and cultural production collide. My CCT model offers a quantitative vocabulary for this collision: it specifies the exact neurochemical conditions under which reward-related memories consolidate, and it predicts that interventions targeting affective contrast, the emotional valence of an experience, may be as important as those targeting dopamine itself. I am a researcher who builds mathematical models of brain circuits and tests them against published experimental data. What I can contribute to MMCA is a rigorous, falsifiable account of the biological substrate that contemporary Asian art about technology, desire, and compulsion engages with, often implicitly. I can deliver a workshop demonstrating how interactive data visualizations of the CCT model can make neurochemical processes legible to non-specialist audiences. I can produce a research paper examining how Korean gaming culture, its regulatory frameworks, and its artistic responses map onto the model's three axes. The residency's emphasis on cross-disciplinary research and public engagement matches my existing practice: I have built four independent data pipelines across life sciences and social science domains, and I maintain a public-facing research site at zyco.org. My professional experience exceeds the five-year minimum: I have worked as a clinical pharmacist, a national product manager, and a bioinformatics researcher, and I have published preprints and co-authored papers in peer-reviewed venues. I am currently enrolled in the M.Sc. Digital Health program at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. I am fluent in English. I have not previously participated in any MMCA residency program. I am prepared to commit fully to the residency period, to participate in collaborative programming, and to submit a final research paper for the annual publication. RESEARCH STATEMENT The Conjunctive Consolidation Threshold model, which I developed between 2024 and 2026, is a dynamical-systems account of how reward-related memories become compulsive. The model couples three axes: dopaminergic reward prediction error, NMDAR-dependent long-term potentiation, and affective contrast, the emotional difference between an experience and its context. These three axes are implemented as a system of ordinary differential equations solved with RK45 integration. The model's 14 free parameters were calibrated using Bayesian MCMC with the DEMetropolisZ sampler in PyMC, with priors elicited from a systematic screen of 1,847 published records on reward learning, synaptic plasticity, and affective neuroscience. All five pre-registered hypotheses were confirmed. The posterior shows super-additivity of 13 to 22 percentage points across model versions, meaning the three axes interact nonlinearly: interventions on any single axis are less effective than interventions on combinations. For the MMCA residency, I propose to extend this model into a computational humanities project titled "Reward Circuits in Asian Digital Culture." The project has three components. First, a systematic mapping of how contemporary Asian societies, with emphasis on South Korea, Japan, and China, represent addiction and reward in policy documents, public health campaigns, and artistic works. This mapping will be coded against the model's three axes: which cultural artifacts emphasize dopaminergic reward (gaming mechanics, loot boxes, social media feedback loops), which emphasize synaptic consolidation (repetition, habit formation, ritual), and which emphasize affective contrast (narratives of escape, boredom, or emotional flatness that make digital rewards salient). Second, a quantitative analysis of this coded corpus using the same Bayesian methods I applied to the CCT model, testing whether cultural representations cluster along the model's predicted axes. Third, a public-facing interactive visualization, built with the data infrastructure skills I have developed across four independent DuckDB-based pipelines, that allows visitors to the residency to manipulate the model's parameters and observe how the probability of compulsive memory formation changes. This project is feasible within the residency period. The coding scheme is already specified by the model's architecture. The corpus is accessible: South Korea's Game Industry Promotion Act, Japan's Internet Addiction Treatment Program, and China's online gaming restrictions for minors are all public documents, and the artistic works I would analyze are exhibited in museums and galleries with public documentation. The computational infrastructure is already built: I maintain self-hosted LLM serving with llama.cpp for document analysis, and I have production experience with Linux VPS, systemd, Caddy TLS, and automated backup systems. The project's intellectual contribution is to treat cultural representations of addiction not as metaphors to be interpreted but as data to be modeled. If Korean gaming policy emphasizes dopaminergic reward while Japanese treatment programs emphasize affective contrast, that difference is measurable and testable against the CCT model's predictions. The project does not claim that culture causes neurochemistry or that neurochemistry causes culture. It claims that both are describable in the same formal language, and that the fit between the two descriptions is an empirical question. I will deliver a workshop during the residency demonstrating the interactive visualization and its underlying model. I will submit a final research paper for the annual publication. I am prepared to adapt the project's geographic scope to the residency's specific resources and networks. PORTFOLIO NOTES The portfolio comprises ten files selected to demonstrate the range and rigor of my research practice. File 1: CCT model preprint, "A Conjunctive Consolidation Threshold Model of Reward-Memory Encoding," submitted to International Addiction Review. This is the primary theoretical document for the residency project. File 2: CCT model preprint, "Bayesian Calibration of the Conjunctive Consolidation Threshold Model," submitted to Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry. This documents the MCMC methodology and posterior analysis. File 3: CCT model preprint, "Affective Contrast and the Consolidation of Reward Memories," submitted to Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. This focuses on the third axis of the model and its implications for intervention design. File 4: Co-authored paper, "Pharmacological Interventions in Alcohol Use Disorder: A Computational Perspective," under review at Alcohol (Elsevier). This demonstrates collaborative work in a related domain. File 5: Pre-registered replication report, "Bipartite Persistent Homology Does Not Predict hERG Cardiotoxicity Beyond Descriptor Baselines." This documents a falsified hypothesis, reported honestly, and demonstrates my commitment to negative results as scientific contributions. File 6: Technical report, "Interface Topology and Drug Resistance: A Null Result on the Platinum Benchmark." This is the second falsified hypothesis in my research program and motivated the pivot to sequence-based methods. File 7: TOPOLOGIX preprint, "Sequence-Based Prediction of Drug Resistance Mutations Using ESM-2 Delta-Embeddings." AUROC 0.804 on the Platinum benchmark, covering 100% of mutations versus approximately 18% for structure-limited tools. File 8: neurocascade technical documentation, "A Receptor-to-Behavior Brain Circuit Simulation Engine." This documents the architecture of the simulation engine and its 62 passing tests. File 9: ergofluids pre-registration and results report, "Koopman Operator Methods with Mori-Zwanzig Memory Kernels for Drug Transport in Tumor Tissue." The synthetic-data gates passed; the first real-data gate did not meet its primary criterion, and this is reported directly. File 10: psyche-twin architecture document, "A Typed Multi-Scale Knowledge Graph for Self-Modeling." This documents the design of an append-only event log with explicit disagreement edges between evidence streams. These files are ordered to show a research trajectory: theoretical model, calibration, domain extension, collaborative work, honest negative results, methodological pivot, current positive results, simulation infrastructure, methods validation with transparent reporting, and a speculative architecture for self-modeling. LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION REQUEST I am requesting a letter of recommendation from Professor Kent Berridge of the University of Michigan. Professor Berridge's work on incentive salience and reward systems is the foundational literature for the CCT model's dopaminergic axis. His endorsement of my research would carry specific weight for this residency because the project examines how reward systems manifest in cultural contexts, a question adjacent to his own investigations of how reward signals shape behavior. Professor Berridge has reviewed my CCT preprints and is familiar with the model's architecture and calibration strategy. His letter can speak to the scientific rigor of my work and its relevance to understanding reward in real-world settings. The letter should be signed and include Professor Berridge's contact information. I will provide him with this research statement and the portfolio notes so that his letter can reference the specific project proposed for the residency. CHECKLIST - [ ] Cover letter (max 800 words), submitted as PDF - [ ] Research proposal (max 1,000 words), submitted as PDF - [ ] Portfolio of up to 10 files (theses, research papers, exhibition documentation), submitted as PDFs - [ ] One signed letter of recommendation from Professor Kent Berridge, including referee contact information - [ ] Curriculum vitae, including education, employment, publications, and skills - [ ] Proof of English fluency (degree from University of Ibadan, which was conducted in English; current enrollment at Hasso Plattner Institute) - [ ] Confirmation of no prior participation in MMCA Residency Programs (Changdong or Goyang) - [ ] Confirmation of minimum 5 years of professional experience (pharmacy licensure 2021, employment history 2021-2026) - [ ] Online interview availability confirmation for shortlisted candidates - [ ] Confirmation of ability to deliver a presentation or workshop and submit a final research paper for annual publication EDITOR NOTES - Eligibility risk: the MMCA program requires a research focus on modern and contemporary Asian art. This proposal frames the CCT model as a computational humanities project about Asian digital culture, but the applicant has no prior publication or exhibition record in art history or Asian studies. The framing is plausible but unproven. The applicant should verify whether the selection committee accepts proposals from non-art disciplines or whether the program implicitly expects art-historical training. - Verification needed: the applicant's employment dates list "National Product Manager, Synthcare (Mar 2026-present)" and "Clinical Pharmacist, Ramset Pharmacy (Jan-Mar 2026)". The current date is not specified in the profile. The applicant must confirm that the employment history presented to MMCA is internally consistent and that the five-year professional experience requirement is met by the time of application. - Gap to fill: the research statement proposes analyzing South Korean, Japanese, and Chinese cultural artifacts, but the applicant's profile contains no evidence of Korean, Japanese, or Chinese language proficiency. The applicant must either confirm working proficiency in at least one of these languages, specify a translation strategy, or narrow the geographic scope to English-language documentation and translated artistic works. - The portfolio includes falsified results (Files 5 and 6) and a gated validation project (File 9). This is intentional: the residency values rigor, and the applicant's willingness to report negative results is a strength. However, the applicant should be prepared to explain these results in the interview without appearing to present them as current positive findings. - The letter of recommendation from Professor Berridge is a strong choice, but the applicant should confirm that Professor Berridge is willing to write for a non-scientific residency. If he declines, the backup option is Professor Samuel Gershman of Harvard, who has already endorsed the applicant's arXiv submissions and can speak to computational rigor.