Mary Lou Jepsen

Mary Lou Jepsen at eTech in 2009.

Mary Lou Jepsen (born 1965) is founder and CEO of Pixel Qi, a manufacturer of low-cost, low-power LCD screens for laptops. She was the first chief technology officer of One Laptop per Child (OLPC).

Early life and education

Jepsen studied Studio Art and Electrical Engineering at Brown. She received a Master of Science in Holography from the MIT Media Lab, and then returned to Brown to receive a Ph.D. in Optical Sciences. Her contributions have had worldwide adoption in head-mounted display, HDTV and projector products. 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.

Jepsen has 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.^[1] 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 new subfield of holographic video and received numerous awards.

Microdisplay Corp

Jepsen helped pioneer single-panel field sequential projection display systems, co-founding Microdisplay, the first company whose sole effort was the development of tiny displays, in 1995. There she served as its chief technology officer through 2003.

Intel

From 2003 until the end of the 2004, she was the chief technology officer of Intel’s Display Division.

OLPC

In January 2005, Jepsen joined Nicholas Negroponte to lead the design, partnering, development and manufacture of the laptop, and for the entire first year of the effort was the only employee of One Laptop per Child [OLPC].

By the end of 2005, she had completed the initial architecture, led the development of the first prototype (which UN Secretary General Kofi Annan unveiled at a UN summit), and signed up some of the world's largest manufacturers to produce the XO-1. By the end of 2007 she had led the laptop through development and into high volume mass production.

At OLPC, notably, Jepsen invented the laptop's sunlight-readable display technology and co-invented its ultra-low power management system - and - has transformed these inventions into high volume mass production rapidly. The XO laptop is the lowest-power laptop ever made, and the most environmentally friendly laptop ever made. The laptop can sustain 5 foot drops, is mesh networked extending the reach of the network by letting signals hop from laptop to laptop.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]}

Pixel Qi

Main article: Pixel Qi

After 3 years with OLPC, In early 2008 she left OLPC to start a for-profit company, Pixel Qi, to commercialize some of the technologies she invented at OLPC. ^[14] Pixel Qi's business is based on the concept that the screen is the most critical component of a portable.^[15]

Awards

For her work in creating the laptop Time Magazine named her to its 2008 list of the 100 most influential people in the world.^[16]

Jepsen has won the Edwin Land Medal for 2011 from the Optical Society.^[17] She has been named to numerous "top" lists in computing by Fast Company and Laptop Magazine and IEEE Spectrum and others. She is the "foursquare" mayor of Carnegie's Restaurant and Bar in Taipei, Taiwan. Quoted as saying "I honestly come here just for the food". ^[18]

Personal life

Jepsen is married to John Patrick Conor Ryan, formerly a partner at Monitor Group. In 1995, she suffered from a pituitary gland tumor and had it removed and thus suffers from panhypopituitarism, requiring a twice-daily regimen of hormone replacement.^[19]

References

1. ^ Paula Dawson and Mary Lou Jepsen: Optical Transfer Of Master Hologram With 20 Meter Depth
2. ^ ACM Queue: A Conversation with Mary Lou Jepsen
3. ^ Pixel Qi "About Us" page, accessed October 5, 2008
4. ^ An excellent interview about de XO Design and technical choices
5. ^ NPR piece on Hundred-dollar laptop in early 2006
6. ^ 8 minute interview with Jepsen at WSIS, Tunis, November 2005
7. ^ 6 minute video with Jepsen describing green features of the XO Laptop, 1 February 2008
8. ^ Interview by Sara Forrest for Computerworld Magazine 2009
9. ^ Mary Lou Jepsen acceptance speech for Anita Borg Women of Vision Award
10. ^ Groklaw interview with Mary Lou Jepsen
11. ^ Newsweek story on Jepsen
12. ^ IEEE Today's Engineer 8/06 article written by Jepsen describing working at OLPC
13. ^ New York Times article on OLPC laptop featuring Jepsen's contributions
14. ^ OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen quits nonprofit effort
15. ^ Pixel Qi eyes Taiwan
16. ^ Mary Lou Jepsen - The 2008 TIME 100 - TIME
17. ^ Edwin H. Land Medal
18. ^ Mary Lou J.
19. ^ Mary Lou Jepsen - Inspiring, Feb. 12, 2007

External links

• Pixel Qi: Mary Lou Jepsen Biography

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Name	Jepsen, Mary Lou
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Date of birth	1965
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