Barrett Comiskey

Barrett Comiskey (born September, 1975) is an American innovator. He is recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer and was the youngest inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, for inventing electronic ink while an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[1][2]

Barrett Comiskey
Born	(1975-09-18) September 18, 1975 (age 50) New York
Education	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS) Stanford Graduate School of Business (MBA) National Tsing Hua University (PhD Candidate)
Occupation(s)	Inventor, Entrepreneur
Known for	Electronic ink (inventor)
Awards	National Inventors Hall of Fame (2016) European Inventor Award Finalist (2013) World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer (2002)

In addition to his early work pioneering electronic paper, Comiskey has founded and developed ventures across Asia in media, energy, and biotechnology. He is currently pursuing Ph.D. research in life sciences at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, focusing on Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism, and works with Raglan and its spinout Arcadian Drive on electric vehicle modernization projects.^[3][4]

Career

E Ink

Comiskey is one of the "fathers of E Ink."^[5] As an undergraduate at MIT, Comiskey invented the microencapsulated electrophoretic display, commercialized by E Ink, which he co-founded in 1997 and is now worth approximately $8 billion.^[6]

He began developing the E Ink display during nights and weekends at the MIT Media Lab in 1995, at the age of 19, after MIT professor Joseph Jacobson challenged him to create a technology that would mimic the appearance of ink on paper.^[7]

Comiskey ultimately conceived the microencapsulated electrophoretic display, which overcame the many practical challenges faced by previous attempts at realizing workable particle-based displays. In 1997, after years of research and experimentation, Comiskey and fellow MIT undergraduate JD Albert realized a working prototype.^[5]

Over the next decade, Comiskey worked on the further development and industrialization of the technology at MIT and subsequently at E Ink,^[8] in both Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Shanghai, China.^[9]

For its role in the evolution of the publishing industry, E Ink has been called "the greatest innovation since Gutenberg."^[10]

While still an undergraduate at MIT, Comiskey was published as first author of the May 1998 cover article of Nature magazine, "An electrophoretic ink for all-printed reflective electronic displays".^[11]

Comiskey holds 72 patents.^[12] He was recognized as a "Technology Pioneer" by the World Economic Forum,^[13] and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2016 for the invention and commercialization of E Ink, together with Joe Jacobson and JD Albert.

Nicobar Group

After E Ink, Comiskey founded Nicobar Group, a business advisory firm specializing in the China nuclear power market.

In its early days, it was a startup "helping Western manufacturers and private equity firms do work in Asia", with a focus on developing strategy and executing technology and operations transfers in China. Today, it is a "one-stop shop" for foreign nuclear power players looking to enter the Chinese market.^[14][15][16]

Migo

In 2009, Comiskey founded Migo, a technology company that provides affordable data services for emerging markets. Its content delivery network distributes digital products and services to mass market consumers at the local corner store through Migo Download Stations (MDS). With a solution that is cheaper than alternatives, Migo aims to level the digital playing field for consumers with limited data usage.^[17][18]

As of December 2021, Migo had 1,000 MDS in Indonesia. Migo aims to grow 10 times and cover up to 100 million people in Java, the world's most populous island, by end of 2022.^[18]

Backed by sovereign wealth fund Temasek, YouTube's co-founder and former CTO Steve Chen,^[19] and other noteworthy investors, Migo's unique technology was shortlisted for the IBC 2021 Innovation Awards, for creating "an entirely new way to deliver digital content in countries that lack a widespread broadband infrastructure."^[20]

Hirotsu Bio Science

In December 2023, Comiskey was appointed Director and Chief Strategy Officer of Hirotsu Bio Science, a Tokyo-based early cancer detection company best known for its N-NOSE urine test using Caenorhabditis elegans nematodes. His work focused on developing the company's international growth strategy and expanding N-NOSE beyond Japan.^[21]

Raglan and Arcadian Drive

Since 2024, Comiskey has worked with Raglan, a U.S.-based engineering company, on defense mobility and dual-use electric vehicle projects.^[22] He also launched Arcadian Drive, a Raglan spinout focused on repowering diesel buses with electric drivetrains for universities, private fleets and public transit agencies in North America.^[4][23]

Research and contributions

Comiskey's publications have been widely cited and credited with establishing new fields of research. His 1998 Nature paper on electrophoretic displays ("An electrophoretic ink for all-printed reflective electronic displays") is described in reviews as the breakthrough that enabled electronic paper and the E Ink industry.^[24][25][26] Later surveys credited the work with catalyzing both the technological and commercial development of flexible electronic paper,^[27] and a 2024 review in the Journal of Optical Microsystems identified it as the technical foundation for all-printed reflective displays.^[24]

Retrospectives from the European Patent Office, MIT Media Lab, and IEEE Spectrum have further highlighted Comiskey's role in inventing electronic ink and establishing electrophoretic displays as the industry standard.^[28][29] Bibliometric studies note that the paper has been cited over 1,700 times, making it one of the most cited works in display technology.^[24][27]

His earlier work on information hiding, co-authored with J. R. Smith, has likewise been cited in landmark surveys as a foundational contribution to digital steganography and watermarking, introducing the mathematical trade-offs between robustness, capacity, and perceptibility in spread-spectrum data hiding.^[30][31]

In 2025, Comiskey began Ph.D. research in Life Sciences at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan. His research focuses on C. elegans as a model organism, with particular emphasis on improving reproducibility across laboratories worldwide. His areas of interest include chemotaxis assays, alternatives to agar substrates, dietary and circadian influences, pheromone signaling, and development of a low-cost "WormBox" device for environmental control.^[3]

Personal life and education

Comiskey holds an M.B.A. from Stanford University, a B.S. in Mathematics from MIT, and is an alumnus of Regis High School in New York City.^[32]

Profiled by Esquire magazine as "The New American,"^[9] Comiskey grew up in New York City and has been in Asia since 2004, living in Shanghai, Taipei, and Manila.