Facebook's Oculus Rift Developer Resigns to Work on Wearable MRI Startup

May 9, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

Mary Lou Jepsen, the executive director of engineering at Facebook and the head of display technology at Facebook’s Oculus virtual reality division, resigned Thursday. Speaking at the Anita Borg Women of Visions Awards held Thursday in Santa Clara, Calif., Jepsen said she was going to focus on miniaturizing MRI into consumable wearable technology that could be used to help cure diseases.

“I’m setting off in a new direction,” Jepsen said at the award ceremony. “I never stopped dreaming of how to create a wearable to communicate with our thoughts, how to do this at consumer electronics pricing. I want to get this to every doctor in the world.”

Prior to joining Oculus, Jepsen ran Google X’s Display Division for three years.

Robert Buderi, writing for Xconomy, spoke to Jepsen on Friday, writing, “Her vision is broad and sweeping: it runs from a new generation of extremely high-resolution, affordable MRI machines for early detection of cancer, heart disease, and more, to a far-out time (or maybe not so far-out) when machines can read people’s minds and people can communicate—with each other and maybe even with animals—via thoughts.”

Jepsen has indicated that all the recent advancements in physics, optoelectronics, big data, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence, motivated her to make the move. “I could no longer wait,” she told Xconomy. “I’m still writing up the patents. But I am incredibly excited to strike off on this direction.”

She plans to start up a company called either Open Water or OpenWater, but is unwilling to discuss funding or more detailed plans, although she does say the company will perform at “the hairy edge of what physics can do.” She will remain at Facebook until August.

“I’m a brain tumor survivor,” she says, which is part of her motivation to shift her considerable talents and unique skill set to healthcare. She had brain tumor surgery in 1995 and has been on medications ever since.

“My big bet is we can use that manufacturing infrastructure to create the functionality of a $5 million MRI machine in a consumer electronics price-point wearable,” she told Xconomy. “And the implications of that are so big.”