Daniel Leithinger

Daniel Leithinger is a Design Tech Innovation Fellow at Cornell University. His research and teaching in Human Computer Interaction focus on physical shape-changing interfaces and spaces. Guided by a vision of computing in which humans engage with computers through their whole body, Leithinger and his students invent robotic interface technologies, study how designers engage with them, and prototype novel applications.

Leithinger received his Ph.D. at the MIT Media Lab in 2015 and his BSc and MSc at the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, Austria, in 2005 and 2007. From 2018–2023, Leithinger was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, leading the THING Lab at the ATLAS Institute. In 2015, he cofounded Lumii (now Fathom Optics) to develop glasses-free 3D display technologies. His projects have been presented at venues like ACM TEI, UIST, CHI, DIS, SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. Widely featured in international news, his work has received awards by Fast Company, A’ Design, Red Dot, Core 77, IDEA, RTT, SIGGRAPH, and Laval Virtual.