Mary Lou Jepsen

Mary Lou Jepsen is an American engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur who works on display, optical, and imaging systems. She is best known in the virtual and augmented reality field for her tenure as Executive Director of Engineering at Facebook and head of display technologies at Oculus from 2015 to 2016, where she led display and optics work for virtual reality hardware. She has also founded or co-founded several technology companies, including MicroDisplay Corporation, Pixel Qi, and Openwater, and was co-founder and chief technology officer of One Laptop per Child.

Jepsen holds more than 250 issued or published patents, the majority in display and optical technologies, and was named to TIME magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2008.

Education

Jepsen earned a Sc.B. in electrical engineering with honors from Brown University in 1987 and a master's degree in media technology from the MIT Media Lab in 1989, where her work centered on holographic imaging and display systems. She returned to Brown University for a Ph.D. in optical physics, completed in 1996.

Early career and display companies

In 1995 Jepsen co-founded MicroDisplay Corporation, based in Richmond, California, and served as its chief technology officer through 2003. The company developed microdisplay technology, small high-resolution screens of the type used in virtual and augmented reality headsets and wearables, as well as in flat-panel televisions. She subsequently joined Intel as chief technology officer of its display division, working on next-generation display products.

From 2005 to 2008 Jepsen was co-founder, chief technology officer, and chief architect of One Laptop per Child, the nonprofit founded by Nicholas Negroponte to build a low-cost laptop for children in developing countries. She led the design of the XO-1, widely referred to as the "$100 laptop," including its sunlight-readable, low-power display.

In 2008 she founded Pixel Qi, a fabless display company spun out of One Laptop per Child, and served as its chief executive. Pixel Qi developed transflective LCD panels that could switch between a backlit color mode and a low-power reflective mode readable in direct sunlight, and the technology shipped in roughly 2.2 million devices. The company lost access to its manufacturing partner in 2013 and ceased operations by 2015; its patents passed to its original investor.

Google

Jepsen joined Google in 2012 as a director of engineering and head of the company's display division, working within the Google X advanced-projects group and reporting to co-founder Sergey Brin. She has said she ran two "moonshot" programs there, including a modular, tileable display system sometimes described as "Lego-like" screens that snap together. She left in 2015.

Facebook and Oculus

In 2015 Jepsen left Google X to join Oculus, the virtual reality company Facebook had acquired in 2014. Her title was Executive Director of Engineering at Facebook and head of display technologies at Oculus, leading display, opto-electronic, and consumer-electronics design and manufacturing for the virtual reality platform.

By her own account, Jepsen's work at Oculus included research and prototypes for next-generation augmented reality and virtual reality systems, among them a wide field-of-view, sunglasses-form-factor AR concept with embedded eye tracking and foveated rendering. She has also stated that she argued internally for a shift in headset displays from OLED to liquid crystal panels as the path to a lower-cost, higher-volume consumer product, and credits that direction with informing the display used in the Oculus Quest 2. The Quest 2 shipped in 2020, after she had left the company, so these are her descriptions of her contribution rather than independently documented product credits.

Jepsen announced her departure in May 2016 at the Anita Borg Institute's Women of Vision awards banquet, saying she intended to work on shrinking medical imaging into wearable devices. Press coverage at the time described her as resigning from her Facebook and Oculus posts to pursue that goal.

Openwater

After leaving Facebook, Jepsen founded Openwater in 2016 and serves as its chairman and founder. The company develops noninvasive medical devices that use near-infrared light, focused ultrasound, and computational imaging in an effort to deliver diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities, originally framed as putting MRI-class imaging into a wearable, low-cost form factor.

The optics and display engineering background that Jepsen developed across MicroDisplay, Pixel Qi, Google, and Oculus carries into Openwater's hardware, which relies on light-based imaging and consumer-electronics manufacturing methods. By 2024 the company had raised about $100 million in total funding and had reduced its hardware to wrist-wearable devices paired with a small console, branded Open-Motion (a near-infrared diagnostic platform) and Open-LIFU (a low-intensity focused-ultrasound therapeutic platform). It has run studies of these devices with institutions including the University of Arizona, and in December 2025 announced a collaboration with the Hospital del Mar Research Institute in Barcelona to study Open-LIFU for brain and neurological diseases.

Recognition

TIME magazine named Jepsen one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2008. She is a Fellow of Optica (formerly the Optical Society) and received its Edwin H. Land Medal in 2011. Other recognition includes CNN's list of top 10 thinkers in 2013 and inclusion on Forbes lists of leading women in technology. She holds honorary doctorates from Brown University and Athabasca University.