Hero of ‘Sixth Sense’
A 36-year-old Indian genius scientist, who was born in 1981 in India, has become the youngest executive director at Samsung. His name is Pranav Mistry, head of Samsung Research America (SRA).
According to Samsung Electronics on June 1, Pranav Mistry has been promoted from vice president to senior vice president at the latest Samsung annual executive-level reshuffle overseas. Mistry joined Samsung at his early thirties and became an executive in December 2014. He now has become the youngest director in the company. This is also an extraordinary promotion case across conglomerates at home.
Pranav Mistry is a renowned computer scientist who has realized the augmented reality (AR) technology, which can only be seen in movies, in real life. When he was a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, he realized “Sixth Sense,” an innovative augmented reality (AR) technology which allows users to pop up a screen on the wall by moving their fingers and control it with their finger tips in the air, at the Technology·Entertainment·Design (TED) talk in 2009, attracting global attention. Currently, he leads innovation of Samsung wearable devices at the SRA, which is Samsung Electronics’ research outpost in Silicon Valley in the U.S.
India-born Mistry finished college in India and moved to the U.S. for his PhD at MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Group lab in 2007. He is considered a genius-level talent even among those from the MIT Media Lab in where was full of global talent. Mistry was selected as one of 35 young innovative scientists of the future y MIT Technology Review in 2009, while he was named one of “young global leaders” by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2003.
Mistry’s future role in Samsung is attracting more attention as he heads SRA, which is responsible for Samsung’s future. He leads Think Tank Team at SRA, which takes charge of disruptive innovations of computer vision and AR labs that research and develop autonomous vehicle technologies.
Mistry is also behind Samsung's latest innovation of wearable devices. He suggested the Galaxy Gear innovative model and developed innovative user experience (UX), including 3D 360 degree video camera. During an interview posted on Samsung Newsroom last year, he said, “The wearable is the fastest growing market in the mobile sector. Samsung Electronics is already well aware of a considerable potential of the wearable market.”
In addition, Mistry aims to develop driverless car technologies using computer vision. Computer vision, which is a part of artificial intelligence, realizes human visual recognition capability using computers. It is considered the core area in autonomous car research. So, it is the most important for Samsung which seeks for a new growth engine in the auto sector after taking over automotive electronics firm Harman.