Mary Lou Jepsen

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Mary Lou Jepsen

Mary Lou Jepsen is the founding chief technology officer of One Laptop Per Child whose large scale humanitarian mission is to deliver low-cost, mesh-networked laptops en-masse to the disadvantaged children of developing countries. In 2005 she was responsible for all of the technology of the $100 laptop (hardware and software). As of 2006, now that the One Laptop per Child has recruited a great team, she is focusing her efforts on their revolutionary new display.

She is an entrepreneur and a widely regarded expert in display systems – from the computer encoding, to the circuitry, drive schemes, light modulation, manufacturing, and optics, all the way on out to the human visual system. Previously her contributions have had world-wide adoption in successful Head-mounted display, HDTV and projector products.

1 Background
2 Recent work
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Background

Jepsen holds a PhD in optics, a BS in electrical engineering, and a BA in studio art, from Brown University and an MS from MIT.

[edit] Recent work

Previously, she co-founded the first company whose sole effort was the development of microdisplays in 1995 (www.microdisplay.com) and served as its chief technology officer through 2003. Until the end of the 2004, she was the chief technology officer of Intel’s Display Division.

She divides her time between the business and technical sides of industry. On the technical side - over the last decade - she has been a pioneer in single-panel field sequential projection display systems. She has created innovative optical designs, microdisplay drive schemes and circuitry, as well as fast switching liquid crystals modes, and manufacturing processes for them - and is a well known pioneer of LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon) microdisplay devices.

Previously, she created some of the largest-ambient displays ever. In Cologne, Germany she built a holographic replica of pre-existing buildings in the city's historic district...and created a holographic display encompassing a city block. She also conceived, built mathematical models of, resolved the fundamental engineering issues, and solved some of the logistics - to create what would have been the largest display ever for mankind: images displayed on the darkened moon. She co-created the first holographic video system in the world at the MIT Media Lab in 1989, where the interference structure of the hologram was computed at video rates, and shown on her hand-made display. This system inspired a whole new field of holographic video and received numerous awards. Her PhD work combined rigorous theoretical coupled-wave analysis with lab work, in which she created large-scale, embossed surface-relief diffraction gratings with liquid crystal-filled grooves with high diffraction efficiency in un-polarized illumination.

She has accepted a role as a professor at the MIT Media Lab in September 2007 where she will found and lead a research effort in nomadic displays.