Biography

Kwan Min LEE (이관민, Ph.D., Stanford) is the inaugural Korea Foundation Endowed Chair Professor in CKS & New Media, and the Director of UX (User Experience) Lab at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Previously, Lee was Vice President and Director of User Experience (UX) at Samsung Electronics and led its innovation in the award-winning Samsung TV Smart Hub and Smart Controller. He also found and directed Samsung’s C-Lab, the most successful open innovation institute at Samsung. In S. Korea, Lee was also the founding director of Interaction Science Research Center and the founding WCU (World Class University) Professor of the Department of Interaction Science at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU). Prior to SKKU and Samsung, Lee had taught at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California (USC) for 12 years as one of the youngest tenured professors. Lee specializes in UX (User Experience) research and design, open innovation, and human machine interaction including human-computer interaction (HCI), human-robot interaction (HRI), and human-AI interaction (HAI). Lee’s research findings have been covered by Washington Post, BBC News, USA Today, and other major news agencies. Lee has received more than 12 million US dollars research grants from the National Research Foundation, National Science Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, Samsung, Hyundai Motors, and other international agencies. Lee is one of the most frequently cited scholars in the fields of Communication, User Experience, and AR/VR/MR, and elected Fellow of International Communication Association (ICA). Lee holds multiple international (USA, EU, China, and S. Korea) patents in smart display interfaces, remote controller, gesture control, and multimedia production. Lee has a long history of successfully advising multinational companies (e.g., Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motors, CJ Group) and startups (e.g., Epikar, O2O, Domulmori, Quack.com, ESLEdu, etc.) in the areas of smart home, smart mobility, Fintech, speech user interface (SUI), social robots, user experience (UX), educational technologies (EduTech), and future strategies.