Jefferson Y. "Jeff" Han (born 1975) is a computer scientist who worked for

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

's (NYU)

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU), and is among the most prestigious mathematics schools and mathematical sciences research cente ...

until 2006. He is one of the main developers of " multi-touch sensing", which, unlike older

touch-screen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is often ...

interfaces, is able to recognize multiple points of contact. Han also works on other projects in the fields of

autonomous robot An autonomous robot is a robot that acts without recourse to human control. The first autonomous robots environment were known as Elmer and Elsie, which were constructed in the late 1940s by W. Grey Walter. They were the first robots in history th ...

navigation,

motion capture Motion capture (sometimes referred as mo-cap or mocap, for short) is the process of recording the movement of objects or people. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robo ...

real-time computer graphics Real-time computer graphics or real-time rendering is the sub-field of computer graphics focused on producing and analyzing images in real time. The term can refer to anything from rendering an application's graphical user interface (GUI) to ...

, and human-computer interaction.

Career

He presented his multi-touch sensing work in February 2006 at the TED ( Technology Entertainment Design) Conference in Monterey, California. TED released the video online six months later and it spread quickly on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

. Han founded a company called Perceptive Pixel to develop his touch screen technology further, and he has already shipped touch screens to parts of the military.Can't Touch This
Fast Company, February 2007 Han's technology has been featured most notably as the " Magic Wall" on

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

's Election Center coverage. Han's company was acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

in 2012, where he became Partner General Manager of Perceptive Pixel (later

Surface Hub The Surface Hub is a brand of interactive whiteboard developed and marketed by Microsoft, as part of the Microsoft Surface family. The Surface Hub is a wall-mounted or roller-stand-mounted device with either a 55-inch (140 cm) 1080p or an 8 ...

). Han left Microsoft in late 2015, shortly before Surface Hub's launch.

Personal life

He is the son of middle-class Korean immigrants who emigrated to the United States in the 1970s.

Education

Han graduated from

The Dalton School The Dalton School, originally the Children's University School, is a private, coeducational college preparatory school in New York City and a member of both the Ivy Preparatory School League and the New York Interschool. The school is located i ...

in New York in 1993 and studied

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

and

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

for three years at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

before leaving to join a start-up company to commercialize the

CU-SeeMe CU-SeeMe is an Internet videoconferencing client. CU-SeeMe can make point to point video calls without a server or make multi-point calls through server software first called a "reflector" and later called a "conference server" or Multipoint Co ...

video-conferencing software that he helped develop while an undergraduate at Cornell.

Honors

Han was named to ''Time'' magazine's 2008 listing of the "100 Most Influential People in The World".

References

External links

Jeff Han's Multitouch Demo (II) (2007Mar21)

Jeff Han demonstrating multi-touch interface on big screen

Jeff Han's 10 min Talk at TED Conference (2006) Monterey, CA

Jeff Han homepage at NYU

Specific Multi-Touch Sensing work – includes video

* ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiS-W9aeG0s Presentation over YouTube
Perceptive Pixel

The Untold Story of Microsoft's Surface Hub
* *
"The radical promise of the multi-touch interface" (TED2006)
American computer scientists 1975 births Living people Scientists from New York (state) New York University staff Cornell University College of Engineering alumni Dalton School alumni {{compu-bio-stub