Mary Lou Jepsen officially announced last week that she is planning to leave her role as executive director of engineering at Facebook and Oculus for Open Water, a new medical imaging startup.
Open Water’s mission will be to develop high-resolution, wearable MRI machines.
Jepsen spoke to Xconomy about the news, modestly saying she was surprised her move was considered a big news story. She also said this is something she has wanted to do for a long time now.
“It’s such a big idea, it’s what I wanted to do for a decade,” Jepsen told Xconomy. “It’s why I went to MIT [Media Lab]. It’s why I went to Google. It turned out that Google really needed me to do some other stuff that was way more important to Google at the time. I’ve been incubating this since 2005 … and I clearly see how to do it and how to realize it in a few short years.”
Jepsen had surgery to remove a brain tumor in 1995, and said she has taken pills twice a day ever since. She said that led her to research neuroscience and think about the industry’s future.
Michael has more than 16 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.