This week focuses on disruptors - those forging their own paths despite the naysayers. They're treading unchartered territories and pioneering in fields many won't touch.
PODCAST
This week'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. Listen here.
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. Listen here or wherever it is you get your podcasts.
QUOTE
INTERVIEW
Jennifer Doudna is incredible. A biochemist who has pioneered work in CRISPR gene editing, and made fundamental contributions in biochemistry and genetics, she also received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, with Emmanuelle Charpentier, "for the development of a method for genome editing."
In this interview, Ruth Lehmann, Director of the Whitehead Institute speaks with Jennifer about her role in the development of CRISPR-Cas9 and how she first got excited about the field. They also discuss the potential applications of this world-changing genetic technology, the societal and ethical implications of gene editing as well as current research projects, collaborations, and new advances in biology. Watch here.
Image of Jennifer by Christopher Michel.
BOOK
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing and The Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson. When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would.
Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.
Buy it here (currently on sale).
FILM
The Disruptors
I have heard good things about this documentary which focuses on ADHD and features successful ADHD sufferers such as will.i.am
ADHD is one of the most commonly diagnosed-and widely misunderstood-neurological conditions in the world today, affecting nearly 10% of kids and a rising number of adults. But what if having an ADHD brain is actually an asset? A growing number of innovators, entrepreneurs, CEOs, Olympic athletes, and award-winning artists have recently disclosed that their ADHD, managed effectively, has played a vital role in their success.
The Disruptors documentary hears from many of those game-changing people about their ADHD, and takes an immersive look at our approach to ADHD that debunks the most harmful myths, intimately taking viewers inside a number of families as they navigate the challenges-and the surprising triumphs-of living with ADHD.
Watch it here.
Thanks for reading every week, and for listening to the podcast.
Until next time...
Danielle