Oct 19 - 23, 2026
Los Altos High School
Shizhe Shen
Senior Director, Display and Optics
How to fit a universe inside a pair of glasses
Tech
From Physics Class to Virtual Worlds
The story of a student who loved physics, and how the subject he studied in school and the things he tinkered with for fun became a career building the optics inside VR headsets.
Meet the Speaker:
Shizhe Shen builds the lenses and displays that let people see inside virtual worlds. He is Senior Director of Display and Optics at Meta Reality Labs, leading more than 200 engineers who design the optics inside Meta's VR headsets — the part that turns a tiny screen an inch from your eye into a world that feels real. He joined the Oculus team in 2014 when it was two people and helped grow it from there, shipping the Oculus Rift, Quest, Quest 2, and Quest Pro. Before Meta, he designed the front camera for iPhone — a design later reused in over 500 million phones and tablets. He holds 50+ US patents. Shizhe grew up in China and studied optical engineering at Zhejiang University before coming to the United States for graduate school at RIT and an MBA at Wharton. He lives in Los Altos.