From Tunisia to Taiwan, Mary Lou Jepsen has circled the globe in her role as CTO of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project. Founded by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte in 2005, OLPC builds inexpensive laptops designed for educating children in developing nations. Marvels of engineering, the machines have been designed to withstand some of the harshest climates and most power-starved regions on the planet.
To accomplish this, Jepsen and her team had to reinvent what a laptop could be. As Jepsen says, "You ask different questions and you get different answers." The resulting machine, named the XO, is uniquely adapted to its purpose, combining super-low-power electronics, mesh networking, and a sunlight-readable screen, which Jepsen designed herself. Although still shy of the "$100 laptop" goal envisioned in the beginning, the XO is still the most inexpensive laptop ever built.
This fall, Jepsen took a break from her busy schedule to speak with us about some of the design challenges she and her team faced when developing the XO. Interviewing Jepsen is her husband, John Ryan, a partner at Monitor Group, a technology consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.