SDF

LEE Jinha is co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Spatial, a platform for collaboration that uses AR to enable people to work together, no matter where they are. Jinha’s interests growing up were architecture and art, but at his parents’ urging, he ended up studying electrical engineering at Tokyo University. His interest in fusing spatial arts and technology led him to MIT Media Lab, where he created SpaceTop, a computer that allows users to reach inside the screen with their hands, and Zeron, a touchable pixel. Zeron attracted considerable interest, leading to Jinha being invited to speak at TED in 2013. Jinha subsequently began working at Samsung Electronics, where he successfully transformed the TV screen into a platform for collaboration, data, and art, and he became the youngest group leader at the company. In 2016, Jinha first tried the HoloLens and realized that it wouldn’t be long before AR was fully commercialized. He decided to relocate to New York. There, with investments from the founder of Uber and Instagram and others, he launched Spatial a platform for collaboration that uses avatars to enable the sharing of material and information in a 3D space. He had the chance to demonstrate Spatial at the keynote for HoloLens 2, where he delivered his presentation as a hologram.

Following its launch, Spatial was used mostly by many of the Fortune 100 companies for remote co-working, but since the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, the platform has been provided free of charge to users around the world to help reduce feelings of isolation from having to self-quarantine or work from home. Jinha, who has a strong interest in protecting the environment, hopes the hologram meetings enabled by Spatial will reduce unnecessary business travel, thereby helping reduce CO2 emissions.

In addition to being named one of by MIT Technology Review’s “35 Innovators Under 35,” Jinha was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, one of the “32 Greatest Living Designers” by Fast Company, and one of Forbes Asia’s “30 Under 30.”