Lady Geek

Mary Lou Jespen, formerly the founding chief technology officer of One Laptop Per Child, has recently set up her own company, Pixel Qi. I had the chance to meet Mary Lou at the Women’s Forum in Deauville in 2006, where she talked about her invention, the sunlight-readable display used in the OLPC project. Pixel Qi aims at bringing a new generation of sunlight readable, super high resolution, low-cost and low-power screens into mainstream applications like laptops, e-books readers and digital cameras. Everybody who has tried to take his/her own laptop to the garden to do some work there will immediately recognise the value of such new displays. And they are prone to have a major impact in the developing world too. I have therefore no doubt that Mary Lou will be very successful with this new venture.