Mr. Jefferson (Jeff) Y. Han

A research scientist for New York University's (NYU) Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and one of the main developers of "multi-touch sensing," which unlike older touch-screen interfaces was able to recognize multiple points of contact. He also works on other projects in the fields of autonomous robot navigation, motion capture, real-time computer graphics, and human-computer interaction. 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 6 months later and it spread quickly on YouTube. He has 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. His technology has been featured most notably as the "Magic Wall" on CNN's Election Center coverage He graduated from The Dalton School in New York in 1993 and studied Computer Science and Electrical Engineering for three years at Cornell University before leaving to join a start-up company to commercialize the CU-SeeMe video-conferencing software that he helped develop while an undergraduate at Cornell. He was named to Time Magazine's 2008 listing of the