Talk WHAT: Mary Lou Jepsen: "Silicon Reaches the Display: The Third Semiconductor Revolution" HOSTED BY: Mitchel Resnick, MIT Media Lab WHEN: Tuesday, February 15, 2005; 4:00 PM EST WHERE: Bartos Theatre, MIT Media Lab (E15) SUMMARY: Silicon has hit the display—and, in particular, the microdisplay. When silicon hits a new area, significant disruption always occurs. Now, the revolution of integrated circuits marches right into the display. Once the display is inherently digital, the distinctions fade between the display, the television, the games machine, the computer, and the cell phone. Yet, the display must deliver information to the partially analog and subjective biological endpoint of the human visual system, and often via (particular in the case of microdisplays) analog optical systems. To whit, immature manufacturing technologies and emergent nano-optics complicate things even further. In this talk, Jepsen will begin by discussing many of the problems and setbacks that the industry has faced in the last decade. She will discuss her research in detail and her role in addressing some of the biggest challenges. She will then spend the rest of the talk discussing what other openings the silicon-enabled display creates. BIO: Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen has been active in many fields of display: from flat-panel televisions, to holography, to laser displays and day-lighting. For the last decade she has focused on bringing liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) technology to maturity. She was most recently director of technology development in Intel's Display Division. In 1995 she co-founded the MicroDisplay Corporation and served as its chief technology officer through 2003. Jepsen's principal technical contributions to LCOS are in liquid crystal mode development, LCOS panel drive scheme design, and head-mounted-display and optical engine architectural design. Her recent emphasis has been on single-panel LCOS systems, and her leadership in this area has brought her world-wide recognition as a top innovator in the industry. Prior to entering the microdisplay field in the mid-90s, Jepsen contributed to several breakthroughs in diffractive optics and holographic display technology, including building the world's first holographic video system (at MIT's Media Lab), and the largest hologram in the world, one that spanned a city block (in Cologne). Her PhD work combined rigorous theoretical coupled-wave analysis with lab work, in which she created large-scale, embossed surface-relief diffraction gratings with liquid crystal-filled grooves. Jepsen holds a PhD in optics, a BS in electrical engineering, and a BA in studio art, all from Brown University. She also holds an MS from the MIT Media Lab. She was an assistant professor of computer science at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. MIT Media Laboratory Home Page | Events Main Index