Much of the world that we experience today was made possible only because of a plethora of technological innovations. In the past few decades, great minds from all walks of life contributed to pushing the human race forward, the fruits of which we enjoy on a daily basis.
And while the spotlight often falls on the contributions of men in the tech industry, women have had an equally significant role in pushing the envelope. No matter the area of the tech industry, women developers, designers, entrepreneurs, etc have been indispensable to bringing cutting-edge technologies to life.
Take virtual reality for instance. This is an emerging technology that will revolutionize some of the most important aspects of human life. And contrary to other niches, women have had a greater share of involvement and contribution in this field.
Jacki Morie
Jacki Morie has been working in the virtual reality space longer than the mainstream has even known about it. She has 30 years of experience and has been instrumental in developing technologies to make the VR experience as intuitive, emotional, and real as possible. To that end, she developed an infrasonic floor that would produce a subconscious emotional score in a virtual setting. And, she also invented a scent collar that releases scent based on the environment that a person is in, in VR.
Christine Cattano
If you have ever played or watched gameplays of VR games, you would know how awesome they are. Christine Cattano is another important figure on our list who is making sure these VR experiences go mainstream. She is the co-founder of Framestore studio, which makes immersive VR experiences for some of the most popular movies and tv shows on the planet including Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them VR, Game of Thrones “Ascend the Wall”, Interstellar, Avengers, and more.
Christina Videira Lopes
When it comes to women developers in VR, Christina Lopes probably tops the list. She is a Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, and has had a long and successful career in the tech industry. In recent years, she has been focused on developing the OpenSimulator. It is an open-source platform that can be used by other developers to create virtual worlds. This makes it much easier and faster for them to develop applications for VR. Historically, platforms like these have played a crucial role in pushing their particular fields by leaps and bounds.
Yuka Kojima
Yuka Kojima is the co-founder and CEO of Fove Inc that developed the VR headset with complete eye-tracking technology. Before founding her own company, she was working at Sony, developing games for the Playstation 3. Fove was the first company that brought the eye-tracking VR headset to market at affordable prices. Customers love the experience it provides and Fove hopes to bring the headset to millions around the globe. For her immense amount of work and influence in the VR field, Japan’s Forbes magazine included her in the list of the world’s 100 most powerful women.
Timoni West
Timoni West is a designer who has worked with reputed companies like Flickr and Foursquare. Currently, she is working at Unity Labs and her work will probably shape how applications are developed for VR. Right now, developers code programs for VR using their computers. But Timoni is helping design tools for VR that would allow developers to build games inside of VR itself. This would be a major change and would lead to much faster development of games, applications, and other use cases of VR.
