Rhee In-jong, former mobile chief technology officer of Samsung Electronics Co. who led software development for Galaxy smartphone series, has joined Google as vice president, where he will be in charge of Internet of Things (IoT) projects.

In an exclusive interview with Maeil Business Newspaper on Monday, Rhee said he will lead IoT development at Google as an entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR) starting February 20 to connect Google’s various assets ranging from Google Cloud to connected car platform to Google Home and Nest.

Rhee was credited for changing Samsung Electronics’ image of being weak in software development by creating highly-advanced security solution Knox and mobile payment service Samsung Pay. He also headed the development of Samsung’s artificial intelligence (AI) platform Bixby that secured 20 million or more users in just six months since its launch.

Born in 1965, Rhee graduated from Kyungpook National University and served as computer science professor at North Carolina State University. He joined Samsung Electronics in 2011 and led the company’s mobile business to business (B2B) sector by developing Knox as vice president at the IT & mobile communication division. He won the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers William R. Bennett Prize for his work in computer networks in 2013.

By Song Sung-hoon and Choi Mira

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