Founder & CEO

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I come from a family of exiles, fighters, and revolutionaries.

 

This fuels the vision and drive behind XPHERA. And with this, every individual in our team plays a critical role in driving us forward.

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My dad escaped Vietnam into the ocean on a fishing boat passing the notice of the agents by hiding under blocks of ice in the fish bin. He made it to Malaysia before destroying his own boat. My mom escaped Vietnam the day Saigon fell under heavy gunfire on a small navy barge to Guam.

 

Since I was a child, I've been able to travel around the States, starting where I was born in Atlanta. Traveling to new cities, it's been a common feeling lost in new places, with city centers and crowded centers being a common place for this. I’ve been lost.

Science fiction has been showcasing the abilities in STAR TREK and Tony Stark’s helmet to have the ability to map out one’s surroundings, provide real-time data, and highlight points of interest such as enemy positions, flight trajectories, and environmental hazards. Why not make this a reality for everyone? Solving the inadequacies of navigation was our mission in 2021 and drives us to where we are now.

It is fundamental to understand that nothing worthwhile can be accomplished alone. This is why the XPHERA team plays to half of our capabilities. The other half comes from understanding the actual visions, goals, and motivations of our partners and their customers. From there, we labor to move the missions of our partners forward.

 

I still remember what Steve told me when we were chatting about XPHERA’s work:

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“I love that — you’re actually one of those doers —” (Wozniak, Co-Founder of Apple Inc.)

VP, Engineering

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My journey as a technologist into developing navigational and GIS solutions was a personal one. Over a decade, my multidisciplinary experience comes from heading the efforts of various firms at the intersection of hardware fabrication, software architecture, and blockchain. Most people get socks, I got servers—and my spare bedroom transformed into a buzzing tech lab with industrial-grade server hardware.

 

It all started with the chaos of Atlanta Airport when I was visiting my family. If you’ve ever sprinted through that massive labyrinth—dodging crowds, hopping on trams, and barely making your flight—you know it’s a unique kind of chaos. By the time I collapsed into my seat, drenched in sweat and stripped of dignity, I thought, “I’d rather die than do this again.”

 

This wasn’t just a frustrating experience—it was a wake-up call. Dropping people into unfamiliar buildings and expecting them to navigate efficiently without adequate support isn’t just a logistical failure; it’s bad for business. The entire ordeal was a stark reminder of how outdated and unintuitive navigation systems can fail travelers. That moment cemented my resolve to create solutions that make navigating spaces effortless, empowering, and dare I say, even enjoyable. This is the level of innovation we are driving in the industry.

 

Today, as a father to my daughter, I want to inspire curiosity in the next generation through tools they already use—turning their smartphones into vehicles for discovery and imagination. XPHERA tackles this key challenge everyday: bridging the gap between navigation and information, and creating experiences that bring environments to life. We are not just building a platform to help people find their way but one that also enriches their understanding of the spaces they navigate. Meeting the team for the first time was eye opening. We spent hours brainstorming new ways to push our technology further, driven by a shared passion for innovation.

 

My journey into technology began with my father, an engineer who instilled in me a love for self-education and problem-solving. While other kids traded baseball cards, I was elbow-deep in my dad’s electronic waste bin, dismantling gadgets to see how they worked. My Korean grandmother was born in Japan during a time of great upheaval and she fled to Korea during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Pirates attacked her and she lost everything besides her own life, starting all over on a farm. My grandfather led a vital part of South Korea's military effort with his expertise in telecommunications and reconnaissance. Their shared determination later enabled them to build a life in the United States, providing me a foundation of inspiration from their perseverance, adaptability, and self-discipline.

 

I draw inspiration from visionaries like Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie, who reimagined entire industries with their ideas, and I carry their ethos into my work: think beyond the obvious, work with determination, and remain humble in the process. Outside of work, I’m passionate about cooking, fatherhood, and exploring my lifelong fascination with technology. I’m also an avid music producer, inspired by artists like J Dilla and Nujabes, who blended diverse influences into unique creations—a philosophy I carry into everything I do.

 

As Steve Jobs famously said, "Everything around you that you call life was made up by people no smarter than you... and you can change it." At XPHERA, that’s exactly what we’re doing—redefining how people navigate and experience the world, one innovation at a time.

Head of GIS Engineering

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Ever since I can remember, I've been making things, and starting things in my own way and in whatever way interests me at the time. My heroes are the likes of Adam Savage, and I love spending time with and collaborating with my other maker friends, like JohnGabriel with his creation of Xphera.

 

One of my first public creations that I remember was building a wooden block tower that reached the ceiling of my classroom at Montessori in preschool. It was such a moving piece that one of my classmates asked for an autograph! My next big gig was creating an origami cell phone business in first grade, and after that I was hooked on making things, and sharing them with the world. I went on to make things like a dirt bike track, RC boat, bow and arrows, a metal foundry, custom PCs, various electronics projects, underwater robots, tree houses, 3D printers, a camper van, various software systems, GIS systems, and many more things.

 

I've learned life isn't just about making things, it's about making great things, and I'm currently on a quest to understand at a deep level what that means. What I've learned is that great things are simple. What is the simplest way you can make something before it becomes too simple? That is the solution. To make is to be human, to put a piece of yourself into the world with the beauty of constraint, to understand the world with all of your senses, and to learn what is possible and true.

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Xphera represents this concept of human creativity and exploration of the space around us. Creativity and experience can be a function of position in space, and there's always a balance of going and of being. During my adolescence, my father, brother, and I traveled to Antarctica on a research vessel to meet with extreme remoteness. Last year, I spent 9 days in complete silent meditation, living only off of charity.

 

In the first case, my sense of the known vs. unknown was shattered by going to a far away land. In the second case, my sense of everyday experience was shattered by simply paying more attention to my current position. We have much to gain from plotting trajectories to unknown positions, but of also closely studying the space around us. Xphera is dedicated to exploring this in order to improve the fundamentals of navigation from a first principles standpoint.

Cloud Architect

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I’ve traveled through a variety of airports around the world, each with its unique charm and occasional challenges. I’ve navigated major hubs like San Francisco, Miami, Las Vegas, and Seattle, as well as international terminals in Panama’s Tocumen Airport and São Paulo’s Guarulhos Airport. My journeys have also taken me through several Brazilian airports, including those in Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, and Porto Alegre, where the vibrant atmosphere often contrasts with the chaos of busy terminals. From the sleek terminals in Austin and Oakland to the smaller, more intimate spaces in Tampa, each airport has its own rhythm. While I haven’t had any truly epic lost-in-the-airport stories, I’ve certainly had my moments of confusion—whether it was frantically searching for a gate change in a crowded terminal or trying to navigate through a foreign airport where the signs and language were unfamiliar. Along the way, I’ve discovered that getting a little lost can sometimes be the best way to uncover hidden gems in both airports and cities alike.

Advisor to Technical Team - Machine Learning & Computer Vision

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Mr. Lutterbach likes machine learning, mathematics, metal, Magic the Gathering, literature, German Shepards, and cats. He has enjoyed using his ML expertise to solve logistics problems within the FAA at Cobec Consulting and developing adversarial ML defenses at Booz Allen.