Jo Jin-ho was born in a small village surrounded by mountains in South Korea’s countryside. The grandeur of nature sparked his curiosity from an early age and began forming his creative desires. As he was growing up, he demonstrated talent in visual art, math, and science and enrolled in South Korea’s prestigious Seoul National University to study biology. His career as a content creator began from a serendipitous participation in a competition for educational software development, which he won with a software simulating fruit fly gene experiments. After a brief stint at an IT company, Jo founded his own software startup which developed computer games, and Jo was captivated by the thrill of creating something new. The startup was successfully acquired by NCSoft, a leading game developer and publisher. 

After the acquisition, Jo began teaching science at Korean Minjok Leadership Academy, one of Asia’s leading high schools for gifted education. Engaging daily with young students, he felt the need and desire to write a new kind of book in science? one that would engage and inspire those new to the subject to embark on a lifelong journey of investigation and knowledge.  Over the next eight years, Jo spent his weekdays teaching his students and his weekends writing and drawing for the new book at nearby cafes. 

In 2012, he published Gravity Express (initially titled Amazing Gravity), a book that covered the history of thoughts on the phenomenon of gravity. Gravity Express was a remarkable success. The work won the 54th Korea Publishing Culture Award, the most respected prize in Korean publishing, and was selected to be part of the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism’s highly recommended book list for 2013. The book’s tremendous success led to its expansion into a series, which continued with the publication of Genome Express, an engaging adventure on the birth of the genome, in 2016 and of Atom Express, a drama-filled train ride leading to the discovery of the atom, in 2018.  

Today, Jo leads popular science content studio JNG Interactive and serves as director at the NCSoft Cultural Foundation. JNG Interactive is dedicated to developing high level popular science content for print, visual, and interactive media, and Jo leads JNG’s content creation efforts in part with the Express Series as well as its efforts to communicate with a broader audience via new channels and in new international markets.