This is the last of the women from my History of Women in Tech presentation that I’m going to mention in this series, at least for now. If you want to see the other ladies mentioned – including the ladies of the ENIAC, Barbara Liskov, and Frances Allen – you can check out my presentation on InfoQ!
While Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper are no longer with us, I wanted to also focus on some women who are with us and active today. When I read up on Mary Lou Jepsen, my inner geekette was psyched to see such an interesting story!
Tell us about Dr. Jepsen’s interesting story.
The first thing that caught my mind while researching Dr. Jepsen was her focus areas for her degrees. From art to optical sciences and then applying those to technology, Dr. Jepsen has quite a story. Check out this list:
- Bachelors Degree in Studio Art & Electrical Engineering
- Masters Degree in Holography
- Ph D in Optical Sciences
Some of the things that she’s done in her career include:
- Co-founder of the One Laptop per Child project
- Deployed XO laptops – lowest-power and most environmentally friendly laptops – in over 50 countries in 25 languages.
- Laptop with sunlight-readable display
- Ultra-low power management system
- Every child in Uruguay got one
- Deployed XO laptops – lowest-power and most environmentally friendly laptops – in over 50 countries in 25 languages.
- Founder of Pixel Qi – focusing on low-cost, low-power LCD screens
- Head of the Display Division, Google X Lab
With her varied background, you can see her contributions in:
- Head-mounted displays (devices similar to Google Glass)
- HDTV
- Projectors
- Holographic video systems
So wait… she’s out there today and doing cool stuff. Does she have a website?
She does! Check out her site at: http://www.maryloujepsen.com/