Sokwoo Rhee

Sokwoo Rhee is Corporate Executive Vice President for Innovation at LG Electronics and Head of LG NOVA, LG Electronics' Silicon Valley-based innovation center. He leads LG Electronics’ global innovation projects, new business creation, strategic partnerships, and ecosystem development. Prior to joining LG, Sokwoo served as Associate Director for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) Innovation at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce, covering innovation programs for Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart Cities. He managed the Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC), a U.S. federal government program to develop a global ecosystem of major business and technology stakeholders to create replicable and scalable IoT/smart city projects. Sokwoo previously served as a Presidential Innovation Fellow on CPS, a program by the White House. During his tenure, he co-led the SmartAmerica Challenge, which brought together IoT technologies and organizations across the nation to demonstrate how they can collaborate to create technology-based projects with a focus on socio-economic benefits. Prior to joining the U.S, government, Sokwoo was a co-founder and CTO of Millennial Net, Inc., one of the first organizations to successfully commercialize low-power wireless mesh/sensor networks and IoT technologies from academia. He also worked on wireless medical sensors as a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work and achievements have been widely recognized and he has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the MIT Technology Review’s “Top Innovators under 35.” Dr. Rhee received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.