Oculus exec Mary Lou Jepsen resigns to create new MRI tech
A pioneer in display technology, she's dropping work on VR headsets to fight disease.
Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen is well known for her work in pioneering display technology as a co-founder of OLPC, former head of the display division at Google X and lately Oculus VR, which she joined about a year ago. Tonight during the Anita Borg Institute's Women of Vision awards banquet, the founder and former CEO of Pixel Qi capped off a keynote speech by announcing she will resign her post as Executive Director of Engineering and Head of Display Technologies at Oculus. Instead, she will focus on "curing diseases with new display technology," by bringing MRI machines to every doctor' office in the world. It's an ambitious goal, but a peek at Dr. Jepsen's history shows why she's the person to tackle it.
For more info on what she might be working on, there's video of a recent TED talk with Dr. Jepsen discussing MRI and fMRI tech, which you can watch after the break.
"If we let one gender, race or age group create tech, those solutions won't benefit everyone." @mljmljmlj #WoV16
— Anita Borg Institute (@anitaborg_org) May 6, 2016
"I have decided to leave Facebook and Oculus to cure diseases with new imagery technology." @mljmljmlj #WoV16
— Anita Borg Institute (@anitaborg_org) May 6, 2016
"After incubating this idea for a decade, I can barely wait to begin." @mljmljmlj #WoV16
— Anita Borg Institute (@anitaborg_org) May 6, 2016