Marxent, a leader in the emerging fields of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), announced today that it is funding a full-tuition scholarship at Wright State University to encourage women to pursue careers in computer vision and related fields. Barry Besecker, Marxent’s CTO and co-founder, is a 1995 Math and Computer Science graduate from Wright State. “The market applications for AR and VR are very broad – from gaming, manufacturing, fashion and marketing to medical, entertainment and education,” according to Marxent’s founder.

“We have an amazing team of smart, motivated and talented people at Marxent. We’ve been successful in attracting super team members to Dayton from all over the country, but we’ve had very few female applicants for engineering roles to date. If we’re going to go after all of the diverse opportunities in AR and VR, we need a diverse team and diverse perspectives to do it. So we decided to do something about it. Wright State was immediately on board with our vision on how to make it happen.”

The Marxent WSU Scholarship for women in engineering will be granted annually to a returning junior with a demonstrated interest in software development and a passion for gaming, computer vision, 3D animation and other emerging tech such as Oculus Rift and other AR/VR “wearables.” Besecker adds, “We’re especially interested in applicants with practical experience developing or publishing apps and who are already pursuing their interests as hobbies.” Marxent will also be offering part-time employment to scholarship recipients.

Giving back to the community is also a core value at Marxent and its partners. Marxent is part of the Quicken Loans “family of companies” – more than seventy organizations behind the vision of Dan Gilbert that are making major investments in Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton and throughout the Midwest. “This is a huge inflection point for any company. That is, the moment that you go from a startup trying to establish your place in the world to reinvesting in the community that helped you make it happen,” shared Beck Besecker, Marxent’s CEO and other co-founder. Adding, “We’re thrilled to be partnering with such a great organization in Wright State. We’re just getting started.”

For more information on the Marxent scholarship program, applications are encouraged to contact the WSU College of Engineering and Computer Science.