When I came to M.I.T. in 1960, only 4 percent of the students were female. Today, it's about 40 percent of undergraduates. At Lincoln Lab, they had 1,000 men and two women. But we had a very good boss, and he treated us just like everybody else.

Being a woman has helped my career more than it's hindered it.

All the leadership positions that I have had have one common denominator: none has required that I give up my science work.

I think women benefit from being in places and having positions where the quality of work is the criteria, not what you look like. Not every place is like that.

Education is very important, and I understand that.

I think sometimes people can get lost in the bigger special effects, science fiction, robot stuff, and those are cool and fun to watch, too, but I think it's so important to sometimes step back and watch something that's about life and human interaction.

I'm a mathematician by education, but I have this other thing. A gut instinct.

Any real virtual reality enthusiast can look back at VR science fiction. It's not about playing games... 'The Matrix,' 'Snow Crash,' all this fiction was not about sitting in a room playing video games. It's about being in a parallel digital world that exists alongside our own, communicating with other people, playing with other people.