Today’s guest is Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen – serial entrepreneur, inventor, pioneer in VR, medical imaging and telepathic technology, former professor at MIT Media Lab and currently, founder of Openwater.

Mary Lou spent many of her childhood years unwell before she was finally diagnosed with a brain tumour in her twenties. And going through that had a huge impact on her life as you might expect. For the many years she was quite literally dying, she decided she only wanted to work on really interesting projects - as she says to me in this interview, “I never really thought I would live very long and so I wanted to find really interesting things to do with my life for however long I might live.”

Mary Lou became fascinated with holography and optics whilst at school and spent her career pioneering in VR and in the optics space as an engineering executive at Intuit, Google, Facebook, Oculus, and with her own four startups which included multi-billion dollar non-profit One Laptop Per Child.

She is now using her decades long experience in this space and her experience with a brain tumour to spearhead Openwater where the goal is to create the technology to be able to see deep into the body with the detail of a 3D camera. The implications of this technology will make critical diagnostics healthcare far more affordable and accessible for millions but it could also mean we achieve telepathy which is hugely exciting. 

Mary Lou website / Openwater / Twitter 

Danielle Twitter / Instagram / Newsletter

Mentioned in this episode:

I Know What You're Thinking: Brain Imaging and Mental Privacy