Dr. Tessa Pocock is an invited Panelist at the Plenary Session of the DOE SSL R&D Workshop to be held on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, at 10:30 am at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach, CA.  This Panel, entitled “ENGINEERED LIGHT: ACTION SPECTRUM AND BEYOND” will explore the use of engineered light — light whose spectral intensities are tailored in time and space — to accommodate various applications and the action spectra associated with those applications. […]

We are pleased to introduce the newest members of the LESA ERC – Delos, a world leader in providing standards and solutions for interior environments that can enhance the health, well-being and productivity of occupants; Lighting Science Group, manufacturer of breakthrough LED lighting solutions that  work in sync with nature, originally created in collaboration with NASA to help regulate the circadian rhythms of astronauts on the International Space Station; and Rambus, creator of cutting-edge semiconductor and IP products, spanning memory and interfaces to security, smart sensors and lighting. […]

The Center for Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications (LESA) was recently awarded an additional $2.68 million from the National Science Foundation under its Engineering Research Centers program.  The total dollars received from the NSF to over $30.7 million to date.  LESA is recognized as the global leader for its innovation in applying engineering to the science of lighting.  The LESA ERC is  extremely proud of its accomplishments in research, education and innovation over the last 8 years.

Inventors from the Center for Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications (LESA) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute were recently awarded a U.S. Patent entitled, “Light Emitting Diodes and a Method of Packaging the Same“.  The patent (US 9,245,875) describes how magnets can be used to arrange arrays of LED dies in a desired pattern and connect them to their substrate.  According to Professor Robert Karlicek, the Director of LESA, “Assisted LED self-assembly technology has the potential to radically reduce the cost of manufacturing large LED assemblies.”

A team of LESA faculty and graduate students from LESA Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Boston University were recently awarded a US Patent #9,363,859 entitled, “Sensory Lighting System and Method for Characterizing an Illumination Space.” The patent describes how the LED lighting system in a space can detect occupants’ presence, location and pose without the use of cameras, thereby preserving the privacy of the room’s occupants.

For the eighth summer in a row, the Center for Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications (LESA) sponsored undergraduates and teachers for an in-depth summer research experience.    25 undergraduates and 9 educators from as far west as New Mexico and as far south as Puerto Rico participated in an eight week Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU), Undergraduate Research Program (URP), and a Research Experience for Teachers (RET) where they learned about advanced solid-state lighting technologies and developing new LED-based applications.  […]

LESA RPI faculty, Prof Partha Dutta in collaboration with Ram Krishna Dharmath Foundation University (RKDF), in Bhopal India, have developed a device that can surpass 1400 Celsius from insolation to produce electricity.  This project was sponsored from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India.  Varsity vice chancellor VK Sethi  and Professor Dutta developed the device.  The objective of this project was to achieve the greatest amount of energy from the sun to be used for the production of electricity, without the polluting effects of coal – the primary source of electricity right now.

The University of New Mexico (UNM) has fabricated triangular-nanostripe core–shell semi-polar III–nitride light-emitting diodes (TLEDs) on c-plane sapphire [Ashwin K. Rishinaramangalam et al, Appl. Phys. Express, vol9, p032101, 2016]. The performance results are described as “preliminary”.  By using triangular nanostripes with semi-polar sidewalls, the UNM researchers hope to access the advantages for light-emission without the non-commercial costs of free-standing substrates and at a lower cost, which could accelerate commercial adoption.

Rensselaer Installs First of Its Kind Smart Lighting Testbed in Hospital Inpatient Setting
In an effort to study the effects of lighting on human health and diseases, the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center (ERC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) recently installed a novel hospital inpatient lighting test bed for the study of automated lighting at the University of New Mexico Health Center (UNMHC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

We’ve changed our name! As you read through our website, you will notice gradual changes from “Smart Lighting” to “Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications”.

Our new identity satisfies the existing expectations of our original work, while simultaneously moving forward to acknowledge the maturity, functionality and diversity of our center and the new lighting landscape. This new name more accurately represents what we are doing today – creating “Lighting Systems that Think™” – and captures the broad range of our research in areas such as horticulture and human-centric lighting.

We are excited about this change and hope that it will help not only to differentiate the center, but to demonstrate our growth potential and not be limited by a name that doesn’t quite fit any longer.

Smart Lighting ERC welcomes Richard Radke, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer as their newly appointed Deputy Director of the Smart Lighting ERC beginning September 1, 2015.  In his new role, Professor Radke will continue to oversee the Adaptive Control and Simulation Research Thrust.  As Deputy Director, Professor Radke will support the ERC’s research and vision, expand opportunities for new sponsored research and increase the visibility of the ERC through its innovative accomplishments and initiatives.

Smart Lighting ERC Director Robert Karlicek presented a seminar titled “Unlocking the World of Digitized Illumination” as part of Philips’ Educational Webinar Series.  Of attendees that completed the survey taken by Philips (n=81), 98% thought the webinar was relevant or partially relevant; 95% rated the quality as a 7-10/10 and 89% would recommend the webinar.

Indrani Bhattacharya, PhD student (Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering) and Michael Deagan, PhD student (Materials Science & Engineering) presented the Smart Lighting ERC’s research to members of congress, ERC directors, industry representatives and National Science Foundation (NSF) program managers at the 30th Anniversary celebration of the Engineering Research Centers Program held in Washington, DC on Capitol Hill.  Indrani and Mike explained their research in the context of societal needs and the broader impact of their success.  Pictured below is Congressman Paul Tonko, (who is a strong support of the Smart Lighting ERC and the ERC program), ERC Director Bob Karlicek, Mike Deagan and Indrani Bhattacharya. […]

Dr. Tessa Pocock, Senior Research Scientist with the ERC served as a panelist for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Women in STEM Leadership:  Self-Empowerment and Other Keys to Professional Success that took place on Friday, November 6 at the Russell Sage Dining Hall Main Banquet Room from 5 to 8 p.m.

Dr. Tessa Pocock, Plant Physiologist in the ERC is invited to give a talk at the Portland, Oregon chapter of the IES (Illuminating Engineering Society) on November 18, 2015.

Dr. Tessa Pocock, Plant Physiologist with the ERC presented the keynote talk at the annual Department of Energy’s Solid State Lighting Technology Development Workshop on November 17-18, 2015 in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Pocock’s talk titled “Tuning the Spectrum for Plant Growth” discussed how the ability to tune the spectrum of LED light sources has opened up new possibilities for horticultural lighting — to improve indoor plant production and associated energy use as well as plant nutrient and pharmaceutical value. […]

Dr. Robert Karlicek, Director of the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center, was interviewed by Katherine Ling, reporter for Greenwire, who wrote a detailed article that broadly features the ERC’s work titled, “Next-generation LEDs — bright in more ways than one” [story recirculated with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net]

Dr. Tessa Pocock, Senior Research Scientist will give one of only 5 invited talks at the 2015 CIE (International Commission on Illumination) in Manchester England June 29-July 3.  Dr. Pocock’s talk titled, “Advanced Lighting Technology in Controlled Environment Agriculture” will be presented on the opening day of the conference, July 29.

Professor and ERC Director Bob Karlicek is quoted in an article that appeared in Electronics360 titled, “The Human Side of Lighting” that discusses light and human wellness.

ERC Professor Michael Shur’s (RPI) poster titled “New Ideas in Smart Lighting” was voted the best poster of the 2015 Advanced Research Workshop, Future Trends in Microelectronics: Journey into the Unknown, in Mallorca Spain, June 21-26, 2015.

Bob Karlicek, (Center Director) talks about how lighting can be improved by using the ‘Internet of Things’ in an article and video published by the Albany Times Union.  Robotic and sensor-enabled lighting systems will one day sense who is in a room and exactly how much light they need, depending on their specific activity. These lights could also be used to “see” or sense people who might be having medical emergencies using infrared technology without using cameras or invading privacy in places like hospitals, nursing homes and schools.

“We draw an analogy to the Google car,” Karlicek said. “Done properly, it will be safer, it will save fuel, and it will be better for people. And that’s what we want to do with lighting.”

Professor Thomas D.C. Little (Boston University) co-authored a guest editorial published in the April 2015 issue of IEEE Wireless Communications focused on Visible Light Communications.

An article published in The Schenectady Daily Gazette titled Advances in Lighting will be among Changes-The Daily GazetteSunday features quotes (and a photograph) from ERC Center Director Bob Karlicek.

Center Director/Professor Bob Karlicek (RPI) attended Strategies in Light 2015 in Las Vegas and was an invited workshop panelist for “Human-Centric Lighting.” A blog post on Scientific Seen titled “Human-Centric Lighting: The Real Work Begins”, quotes Prof. Karlicek, cites the ERC work in this area, and provides a terrific synopsis of the panel discussion.

“Solid-State Lighting: Toward Smart and Ultra-Efficient” has been selected for the Best of Advanced Optical Materials 2014 Edition, co-authored by ERC Director Bob Karlicek.

Rensselaer professor and ERC thrust leader Richard Radke is named as one of “20 Under 40″ of the most influential young engineering faculty in the country by ASEE Prism Magazine. Read the full article…

Two ERC students advised by Dr. Kofi Nyarko from Morgan State University showcase their work on Visible Light Communication at the White House’s first ever Maker Faire. Read more…

Smart Lighting ERC Director Bob Karlicek is the International Chairman of the 11th China International Forum on Solid State Lighting, and will be presenting an invited talk at the conference, to be held in Guangzhou, China on Nov. 6-8, 2014. The focus of the conference is the “Application of Lighting in the Internet Era.”

Two ERC graduate students, Mark Durniak and Sagar Ray were selected to be honored as Founders Award of Excellence recipients at Rensselaer’s 21st Annual Honors Convocation on October 25, 2014. The Founders Award is given to only 1% of RPI students who embody qualities of creativity, discovery, leadership, and the values of pride and responsibility at Rensselaer.

Smart Lighting ERC Director Bob Karlicek is an invited panelist for a discussion of smart lighting systems and the industrial internet at GE’s Minds and Machines 2014 Conference.

Tessa Pocock, ERC Senior Research Scientist, gives an invited talk titled “Trip the Light Fantastic” for the Biology Department’s Research Seminar Program at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY.

ERC Graduate Student Octavio Perez was awarded a Scholarship of $1,250 to attend the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America’s 2014 Annual Conference to be held in Pittsburgh, PA.

The Smart Lighting ERC is a sponsor/exhibitor at the SSL Ecosystem 2014: Lighting in the Information Ageconference, September 22-24, 2014 in Cambridge Massachusetts. Boston University ERC Students will also give special demonstrations on “Visible Light Communications Using LED Luminaires”

University of New Mexico ERC student, Mottaleb Hossain was appointed as the Associate Vice President of the student membership by the IEEE Photonics Society for 2014-2015. Mottaleb will work with the Society to empower students to become effective leaders and active community members within the Society and the photonics community at large.

The Smart Lighting ERC hosted a reception celebrating a generous donation of a cutting-edge oscilloscope from Keysight Technologies Inc. 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm in the Low Center for Industrial Innovation, Room 7003.

Smart Lighting professor and associate director Thomas D.C. Little is invited to speak at the founding conference for Visible Light Communication in China on August 27-28, 2014.

Smart Lighting director Bob Karlicek is quoted in NewScientist Magazine about the applications of advanced sensing systems in Street Lighting.

The Smart Lighting ERC hosts Dr. Shiv Kalyanaraman, Chief Scientist with IBM Research Australia for his presentation titled,Energy meets Smarter Transportation: The Energy-Transportation Nexus & Personalized Public Transportation.

Smart Lighting ERC Center Director Bob Karlicek gave an invited talk at the Design Lights Consortium Stakeholder Meeting In San Diego, CA and participated in a panel discussion about the future of Solid State Lighting.

Dr. Tessa Pocock, Sr. Research Scientist in the ERC was accepted as a member in the Illuminating Engineering Society and was asked to serve on the Photobiology Committee. Professor George Brainard of Thomas Jefferson University and a collaborating partner in the ERC also serves on the committee that is tasked with evaluating and interpreting data and other information on the biological effects of radiant energy and advises the Board on matters pertaining to photobiological projects.

Dr. Tessa Pocock, Sr. Research Scientist in the ERC will participate in a roundtable discussion on the Standardization of LED Lighting for Horticultural Applications as well as present “The impact of LED lighting on specialty crops” at a colloquy at the 2014 American Society for Horticultural Science Annual Conference held in Orlando, FL.

Md Mottaleb Hossain, ERC Graduate Student from UNM was awarded a prestigious 2014 SPIE Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship in the amount of $2000 for his contribution to the Optics and Photonics community. In 2014 SPIE awarded $353,000 in education and travel scholarships to 144 outstanding individuals from around the world, based on their potential contribution to optics and photonics, or a related discipline.

ERC Director Bob Karlicek gives a presentation titled “How Smart Should Smart Lighting Systems Be?” at the Smart Lighting 2014 conference to be held on May 7-8, 2014, in Barcelona, Spain. The Smart Lighting ERC was also an exhibitor at the conference.

Smart Lighting ERC Graduate Students Anqing Liu and Octavio Perez received a third place award for their entry titled “Controlled Environmental Architecture LED Lighting System, New Metrics” at the 2014 Earth Day Event & Student Competitionheld at RIT in Rochester, NY. The event was sponsored by the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute.

Four new companies joined as industrial members of the ERC: Vivonics, Thermal Solution Resources, Pixelligent, and Edison Price.

RPI graduate student Kumar Modepalli received the best presentation award at the 29th IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference(APEC) for his paper titled “Single stage dual purpose off-line HB- LED drivers for Illumination and Visible Light Communication”. The award included an appreciation certificate from IEEE and award of $100. This conference was held March 16- 20,2014 at Fort Worth, Texas

RPI graduate student Mark Durniak will be presented with a $1,000 scholarship award by the Eastern NY Chapter of ASM International at their March dinner meeting.

RPI graduate student Mark Durniak is one of three recipients of the 2013 Electronic Materials Conference Best Student Presentation Award for his presentation “Cubic GaN Templates for LED Applications”. The award, accompanied by a monetary prize of $500, will be presented at the 2014 EMC Meeting, which takes place at the University of California, Santa Barbara, CA on June 25-27, 2014.

Dr. Tessa Pocock joins the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center to expand Smart Lighting to Horticulture and Plant Physiology Research.

ERC Professor Thomas Little of Boston University is interviewed for (and pictured in) an article titled, “Optical Wireless Communications-The New Hot Spot” in the March 2014 issue of Optics and Photonics News.

At “Strategies in Light 2014” in Santa Clara California, the ERC is an exhibitor and Director Bob Karlicek moderates a panel discussion titled, “Smart Lighting and the Semiconductor Industry“.

ERC hosted Smart Spaces: 5th Annual Industry-Academia Days

“Going Green with Cubic GaN” is published in the Jan/Feb 2014 issue of Compound Semiconductor Magazine showcasing work by ERC student Mark Durniak and Prof. Christian Wetzel.

Compound Semiconductor Magazine publishes an article in its Jan/Feb 2014 issue showcasing research of ERC student Zhongda Li, and Prof. Paul Chow titled, “Bringing the Inverter Onto the Chip”.

The Smart Lighting ERC hosts a booth at Eureka Park, CES Las Vegas, to present a prototype of wearable glasses that measure light exposure and biometric signals to provide personal health insights. Contact Silvia Mioc for more information.

LEDs Magazine discusses Smart Lighting ERC’s participation in CES in an article Rensselaer Polytech researchers demonstrate light measurement system at CES 2014.

Press Release: Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to Exhibit Prototype Google Glass™ Application in Eureka Park at CES in Las Vegas.

Press Release: Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center opens registration for the Smart Spaces conference, February 12-13, 2014 in Troy, NY

The University of New Mexico will honor Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics, Steve R.J. Brueck with the first UNM Presidential Award of Distinction this fall. Professor Brueck, currently the ERC’s Associated Director from UNM, will receive the inaugural award on Friday, Dec. 13, 2013. UNM President Robert Frank established the award to recognize outstanding career achievement, scholarly excellence, leadership in a profession, noteworthy public service or humanitarian endeavor. The ERC congratulates Steve on this much-deserved award!

Hafez Raeisi Fard, ERC RPI doctoral candidate in the Mechanical Engineering Department at RPI is one of 10 winners ofRensselaer’s “Change the World Challenge” student innovation competition, for his project titled, “Enhanced Energy Efficiency Using Thermal Management in Electronic Devices.”

Matt Laherty, Business Development Manager, Cisco, will present at the Smart Lighting ERC Speaker Series: Lighting Transformed: How Innovation Will Create New Opportunities in Lighting

Majeed Hayat, ERC Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Mexico, has been named anIEEE Fellow. He is being recognized for contributions to the modeling of impact ionization and noise in avalanche-photodiode devices.

Bytelight, an ERC start-up company, gets a write-up in StartUp Beat Magazine titled: “Sending Bytes through Lights”.

Dr. Chris Bohler, Director of Innovation at Eaton’s Cooper Lighting Division, presented at the Smart Lighting ERC Speaker Series: The New Lighting Industry: Evolution or Revolution?

Electro Optics Magazine publishes an editorial titled “Illumination that thinks: the potential for ‘smart lighting’ written by ERC Director and Professor Bob Karlicek.

Dr. Mark Taylor, Project Manager from Corning Inc., presents at the Smart Lighting ERC Speaker Series: Advanced Glass Opportunities in Solid State Lighting.

Kirthana Bhat, RPI Student in Chemical Engineering ’16, blogs about her summer undergraduate research experience with the Smart Lighting Center on RPI’s Society of Women Engineers website.

ERC Director and Professor Bob Karlicek presents an overview of Smart Lighting at the general meeting of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) in RPI’s Student Union, Room 3602 at 6:30 p.m.

Anton Tkachenko, ERC student in the Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering Department (ECSE) at RPI was awarded the Veera and Arjun Saxena Fellowship in Microelectronics. The $3,000 award is given each academic year to an outstanding PhD student in the ECSE Department. Students are selected based on grade point average, overall performance, and faculty recommendations. The ERC congratulates Anton!

ERC Director and Professor Bob Karlicek presents an overview of Smart Lighting at the general meeting of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) in RPI’s Student Union, Room 3602 at 6:00 p.m.

The Smart Lighting ERC invites students interested in improving the efficiency of lighting across campus to join the Smart Lighting Sustainability Club. The kick-off meeting for the fall semester will be held at 7 pm in CII 7128. The club was established to increase campus awareness of the positive impact of solid state lighting, consistent with Rensselaer’s long term energy conservation plan.

Lessons Learned from Internships – ERC students share their internship experiences, presenting a brief discussion about the organization that sponsored the intern, their research topic and personal experiences, and the impact this endeavor had on their life.

ERC Director and Professor Bob Karlicek is welcomed as an Editor-in-Chief to the new, open access Journal of Solid State Lighting, published by Springer-Verlag GmbH, Berlin.

ERC Graduate Student Md. Mottaleb Hossain from the University of New Mexico is awarded a prestigious SPIE Student Travel Grant 2013 to present his work “Theoretical characteristics of 1.55 µm InN based quantum dot laser” at the SPIE Optics & Photonics Conference, San Diego, CA, USA, August 25-29, 2013.

Smart Lighting ERC Professor Daniel Feezell at the University of New Mexico receives a prestigious DARPA Young Investigator Award titled: “High-Speed Nonpolar InGaN/GaN Light-Emitting Diodes Using Plasmonic Core-Shell Nanowires.”

Donated GE LED light fixtures were installed in the Civil Engineering Department on Rensselaer’s campus. See a picture of the lighting and read the article with quotes from Professor Karlicek in LEDInside.

Professor Karlicek and PhD student An Mao publish “Surface patterning of nonscattering phosphors for light extraction,” in the August 1, 2013 issue of Optics Letters.

Professor and Director Bob Karlicek is interviewed on Australia’s National Radio Program called “Future Tense”. Listen to the“The Light Bulb Goes Wi-FI” to learn more about smart lighting, color rendering, and other new lighting technologies.

ElectroIQ picks up the story of Professor Paul (Tat-sing) Chow’s paper on Monolithic Integration with an article titled LED TEchnology Breakthrough

Smart Lighting ERC researchers demonstrate the first monolithic integration of an LED and high-electron-mobility transistor on a Gallium Nitride Chip. This innovation could open the door to a new generation of LED technology that is less expensive to manufacture, significantly more efficient, and which enables new functionalities and applications far beyond illumination. View the full paper in Applied Physics Letters at doi:10.1063/1.4807125.

Professor Partha Dutta was invited by the National Academy of Sciences to sit on a panel tasked with developing recommendations for a strategy to develop a sustainable, long-term collaborative program between the U.S. and China in the area of energy and environment based on fundamental materials research at the nanoscale. Work on this report will be on-going.

ERC students and professors Chow, Wetzel and Karlicek publish ground-breaking research titled “Monolithic integration of light-emitting diodes and power metal-oxide semiconductor channel high-electron-mobility transistors for light-emitting power integrated circuits in GaN on sapphire substrate,” in Applied Physics Letters. See the full paper at doi:10.1063/1.4807125

Prof. Robert Karlicek gives an invited talk titled, “Smart Lighting – Lighting Systems that Think at the Smart Lighting 2013Conference held in Frankfurt, Germany.

The University of New Mexico announces that Electrical and Computer Engineering and ERC faculty member Meeko Oishi has won a Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Prof. Oishi’s work focuses on developing theoretical and computational techniques to make collaborative human-automation systems more reliable. This award will help to leverage Prof. Oishi’s ERC work in human factors of lighting and circadian rhythm.

Control systems expert and ERC faculty member Sandipan Mishra has won a Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Professor Mishra will investigate and develop new sensing and controls paradigms to help push forward the field of additive manufacturing.

Professor Partha Dutta is an invited speaker at SEMICON 2013 – LED Manufacturing Forum in Marina Bay Sands Expo, Singapore. Prof. Dutta presented Smart Lighting: The era beyond LED bulbs

Silvia Mioc, ERC Innovation Director, presented an overview of the Smart Lighting Center at the meeting of the Springfiled, MA IEEE Section.

Alex Dumitrescu, an ECSE RPI student and ERC Sustainability Club member, won first place for undergraduates at the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute at Rochester Institute of Technology’s second-annual student competition, held in Albany, NY.Alex took home a first place prize of $1500. Congratulations Alex!

Smart Lighting ERC and Light Think University launch Ready to Step Into the Light during LIGHTFAIR International in Philadelphia, PA, USA

Prof. Detlef Hommel, from the University of Bremen, Germany, presents at the Smart Lighting ERC Speaker Series: “InGaN quantum dots – from LEDs to single photon sources”

Smart Lighting ERC Director Bob Karlicek gave a keynote talk titled “Packaging Innovation: The Key to the Future of Solid State Lighting” at the 9th International Conference and Exhibition on Device Packaging (iMAPS), Scottsdale, AZ, USA.

ERC student Li Jia and Professor Radke’s paper, titled “Using Time-of-Flight Measurements for Privacy-Preserving Tracking in a Smart Room“, appeared online in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.

Smart Lighting ERC Director Bob Karlicek was appointed to and joined the Technical Advisory Board of the International SSL Alliance (ISA).

The ERC hosts the 4th Annual Industry-Academia Days More information

The ERC hosts a half-day workshop on Lighting and Human Performance at Strategies in Light in Santa Clara, California.

Professor Karlicek’s work with Transfer Devices Inc and Grad Student, An Mao, publish “Nanopatterning using a simple bi-layer lift-off process for the fabrication of a photonic crystal nanostructure” in Nanotechnology.

Smart Lighting Seminar Series: Students from the Sustainability Volunteer Club presented their experiences with the DCC Bulb Replacement project and the sustainability club. View Flyer

Smart Lighting ERC Director Bob Karlicek gave an invited talk titled “Possibilities for Smart Lighting and Smart Solar Integration” at the Electronics Materials and Applications Conference held by the American Ceramic Society, Orlando FL

Bytelight, a company started by former ERC Boston University students solves indoor GPS mapping and gets press in Wired Magazine.

ERC Professors Susan Sanderson and Ken Simons publish a new study of the LED lighting industry’s emergence that tells the story behind the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics and much more, revealing a half-century-long process involving many tens of thousand of researchers and technological and industrial twists and turns. Free download through December 5, or at Science Direct.

ERC’s Renssellaer professor Linda Schadler named Russell Sage Professor.

ERC’s Rensselaer professor and deputy director of the ERC, Partha Dutta, gives the opening keynote on the secon day of the Smart Lighting 2012 conference in Dusseldorf, Germany. He spoke about “Smart Lighting Systems Design and Applications”.

ERC’s Rensselaer professor Christian Wetzel received “Iluminating Ideas” award form DOE for “Significant Achievements In Solid State Lighting R&D 2011”. The award was given during the Department of Energy R&D Workshop in Atlanta, GA to a total of six collaborative contractors within the Department of Energy’s $114M/yr Solid State Lighting Program. RPI is the only university-based winner of the award.

“Innovating Smarter Lighting Systems and a Brighter Future at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.”

U.S. Representative Paul D. Tonko delivered the keynote address to help kick off the third annual “Smart Spaces: Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center Industry-Academia Days.”

Several ERC students were part of the team from Boston University selected as finalists in a $50k New Venture Competition. They will present their business plan for start-up “NexGen Arrays” to develop next-generation microarray slides that provide increased sensitivity for fluorescent assays, and allow label-free mass density measurements. Three prizes will be awarded on April 4, 2012, with first place winning $50,000. (http://www.bu.edu/itec/events/50k-competition/)

3rd Annual Smart Spaces: Smart Lighting ERC Industry – Academia Days, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.

As part of the “Smart Spaces: Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center Industry-Academia Days”, ERC students competed in an elevator pitch competition. The winners of this competition were Brian Frey (RPI), Fangxu Dong (RPI), John Waldron (RPI), and Michael Rahaim(BU).

Exploring Engineering day for students in grades 3-6 and their parents.

Boston University ERC students, Margo Monroe, Alex Reddington, Jacob Trueb, and Joey Greenspun were named as 1 of 10 semi-finalists in the Prize for Primary Healthcare run by CIMIT and have been awarded $10,000 to use toward the final proposal deadline of June 3rd. First prize will be $150,000, with second and third place receiving $100,000, and $50,000 respectively. (http://www.cimit.org/grants-cimitprize.html).

Director Bob Karlicek was interviewed by the BBC and is quoted in this terrific article: “LED bulbs: The end of the lightbulb as we know it“

The second edition of the ERC Student Newsletter SPAM (Smart Lighting Periodic Advisory Memo) is available.

Smart Lighting ERC Industrial Speaker Series – Joseph DeNicholas, Texas Instruments: The Evolution of Electronics for Intelligent and Adaptive Lighting Systems

The Smart Lighting ERC is supporting the Smart Lighting Partnering Summit, in Santa Clara, CA on April 2, 2012.

The Smart Lighting Center is featured in the Business section of the The Albany Times Union.

Design Your Future Day: Eleventh grade high school girls with an interest and aptitude in math and science come to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) for an exciting day of hands-on exploration in engineering, science, and technology.

Professor Christian Wetzel (RPI) presented new work on higher efficiency lighting and power device technology at Semicon West in San Francisco: “Energy efficiency and green technology with wide bandgap GaN-based epitaxy”. Energy from currently used LED’s is lost to heat through the back of the LED and/or imparted to the phosphor needed to provide the color or shade of lighting desired. The ERC is working on developing technology that would lessen the dependency on phosphors, optimizing the wavelength of the light and improve the efficiency of the LED.

The Sky Factory SkyMobile is a gallery on wheels that transforms interior spaces with illusions of nature using digital cinema virtual windows. The Sky Factory products help us visualize the ERC’s goals of combining illumination, communication and adaptive controls with video displays.

An article titled: Solid state lighting reduces energy consumption is published in the “Polytechnic”.

Sajol Ghoshal, Director, OSL Business Unit of AMS-TAOS USA presented a talk titled: Sensor-Processing Systems: A New Wave Of Environmentally Aware Lighting 10:30 am – 12:00 pm in the JEC 3117.

Director/Professor Bob Karlicek gave an invited talk at the “Next Generation Nanotechnology for Solar Energy and Lighting Conference”, The top of Europe, Copenhagen and Malmo.

Smart Lighting Seminar Series: Nonpolar/Semipolar III-Nitrides for High-Efficiency Visible Optoelectronics

Prof. Daniel F. Feezell, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Center for High technology Materials, University of New Mexico.

“Smart Lighting ERC Speaker Series: Ultra-Efficient Solid-State Lighting” Presented by Jeff Tsao, Sandia National Laboratories and member of the ERC’s Scientific Advisory Board

Boston University, a core partner in the Smart Lighting ERC, is also taking steps to install LED lighting across campus as part of sustainability initiatives. Visit http://www.bu.edu/sustainability/what-were-doing/energy/led-lighting-retrofits/ for more information.

Rensselaer takes first steps toward delivering the right light, when and where you need it.
Phase I of the Smart Lighting Sustainability Club project is complete with the installation of 300 LED bulbs in the DCC 2nd floor and Great Hall saving 15,000 tons of carbon emissions! View DCC Bulb Replacement Project

Lessons Learned from Internships – Four ERC Students Present. Please join us for this seminar where ERC students will share their internship experiences. Each student will briefly discuss the company, their research and how it links with the ERC work, their biggest challenges and lessons learned.

The Smart Lighting ERC will sponsor an all-day session at the Advanced Energy 2012 Conference at the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center in New York City.

Jason Eichenholz, CTO, Ocean Optics, spoke about “Spectral Sensing – Seeing More Than Your Eye Can See” as part of the Industrial Speaker Series.

Professor Karlicek delivers an invited plenary talk “Smart Lighting – More than Just Illumination” at the Ninth China International Exhibition and Forum on Solid State Lighting

Professor Karlicek will lead a workshop about Smart Lighting at the Asia Communications and Photonics Conference 2012

Congressman Paul Tonko tours the Smart Lighting Laboratories

Congressman Paul Tonko got a firsthand look at the leading-edge research and academic endeavors taking place in the Smart Lighting Laboratories. WMHT, the local public ratio station were so impressed they came back to the center to shoot a video featuring ERC labs and Dr. Karlicek.

Professor Karlicek is an Invited Speaker at The Illumination Engineering Society (IES) Annual Meeting and will give a talk titled: “Beyond Ordinary Illumination”

Dr. Majeed Hayat, Associate Director of the Center for High Technology Materials at the University of New Mexico and Smart Lighting ERC Faculty member has been elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA). OSA recognized Dr. Hayat “for pioneering the dead-space formulation of impact ionization and noise in avalanche photodiodes and developing non-uniformity correction algorithms for infrared sensors.” The OSA Fellow is awarded to OSA Members who have served with distinction in the advancement of optics. This honor is reserved to no more than 10% of the total membership.

Rensselaer Professor Shawn-Yu Lin Named Fellow of the AAAS.
Nano-photonics expert Shawn Yu-Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a member of the university’s Future Chips Constellation and Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center, has been selected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Professor Christian Wetzel’s paper titled, “Fish scale terrace GaInN/GaN light-emitting diodes with enhanced light extraction” is published in Applied Physics Letters.

Professor Christian Wetzel’s paper titled, “Effects of oxygen thermal annealing treatment on formation of ohmic contacts to n-GaN” is published in Applied Physics Letters.

ERC RPI Materials Science student, Mark Durniak, is awarded a Fellowship under the Sandia National Labs “Excellence in Engineering Graduate Research Program.”

Smart Lighting Industrial Seminar Series: Dr. Ravi Bhatkal, VP Energy Technologies, APPHA, Cookson Performance Materials presents: Thermal and Electronic Interconnects in LED Packaging and Assembly.

Second Annual Smart Lighting ERC Industry – Academia Day

The second annual Industry-Academia Day for the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center was held at Boston University on February 8, 2011. Researchers and graduate students from three core partner institutions, Rensselaer, Boston University, and the University of New Mexico, gathered to discuss research and advances in smart lighting systems, sources, sensors, and controls. Presentations from invited speakers, a poster session and BU laboratory tours were also part of the agenda. A Strategic Planning Retreat followed the public day. The event was attended by representatives from 30 industrial organizations, including member companies. Together, about 130 people filled to capacity the 9th floor venue of BU’s Photonics Center.

Dr. Partha Dutta, Smart Lighting ERC Deputy Director, was a guest speaker at the Nitride Seminar Series at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He spoke on “High Efficiency Phosphors for Full Spectrum Solid State Lighting Technologies”. Read More

Presentations from the Smart Lighting ERC’s Industry-Academia Day conference are now available for download.

Student elevator pitch contest from our Industry-Academia Day featured in Inside Rensselaer, and videos of 3 winners online at YouTube.

Video of panel discussion “Taking A University Technology to Market” at core partner University of New Mexico is now online.

A seminar titled “The Four Pillars of Successful Startups – and Where to Go from There” in the Entrepreneurial Series was presented at core partner University of New Mexico.

Topic: The Four Pillars of Successful Startups – and Where to Go from There – What every entrepreneur needs to know about building a sustainable company”, Barbara Kline, The Breakthrough Center.

Abstract: There are four pillars upon which successful startups are based: passion, leadership, adequate funding and technical savvy. But startups have to grow – or die. Ms. Kline will discuss how these Four Pillars interact – in theory and with examples – to create a viable venture, as well as the steps necessary to make sure the company is well positioned to take the next step – 2nd Stage Growth.

Read More

The first joint seminar with the Center for Future Energy Systems and the Lighting Research Center was held at Rensselaer. James Gaines from Philips Lighting talked about “Solid State Lighting – White Light for General Illumination”. Read More

Professor Partha Dutta, center deputy director, speaks about Scalable Manufacturing and Business Challenges in Nanotechnology at the MRS Spring Meeting in San Francisco. He will also be part of an almost full-day special forum discussion on Thursday, April 28, that will close the conference. The topic of discussion will be: “How to start and grow a successful start-up company, a survival kit for entrepreneurs” Conference Information

The Smart Lighting ERC welcomes Epistar as the latest industrial member.

The ERC welcomes Silicon Core Technologies as an Affiliate Member.

The National Associated Press published a story on LEDs and the Light Fair trade show held in Philadelphia, which quotes Bob Karlicek, director of the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center. The story was featured in a variety of publications including Wall Street Journal, CBS, ABC, and NPR.

Energy@Rensselaer: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Illuminates the Future of Lighting.

Energy@Rensselaer: Moving Smarter LEDs From the Laboratory to the Marketplace

The Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center successfully passed its NSF third-year renewal site review!

ERC holds workshop at the High Impact Technology Exchange Conference

Smart Lighting ERC Education Director Ken Connor held a Mobile Studio Workshop at the High Impact Technology Exchange Conference in San Francisco, CA. Mobile Studio enables hands-on exploration of STEM education principles, devices, and systems utilizing a small, inexpensive ($150) mobile hardware and software platform. When connected to a PC, it provides functionality similar to standard lab equipment (oscilloscope, function generator, etc.). It can also be programmed to provide smart functionality (e.g., to control the states of digital outputs by monitoring analog signals). Additional information can be found here.

HI-TEC is a national conference on advanced technical education where technical educators, counselors, industry professionals, and technicians can update their knowledge and skills. Charged with Educating America’s Technical Workforce, the event focuses on the preparation needed by the existing and future workforce for companies in the high-tech sectors that drive our nation’s economy.

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology played host to fellow members of the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center on Thursday, as engineers from across the country joined to discuss the concept of smart lighting with local students.

Professor Satoshi Kamiyama, Meijo University, spoke about New Materials and Technologies for White LEDs.

Leo Schowalter, CTO, Crystal IS spoke about Improved Performance UV LEDs, in the kickoff event of the Industrial Speaker Series which is in its second year.

Robert Casper, Camille Dan Family Research Chair, Mt. Sinai Hospital, Toronto and SAB member spoke about Shift Work: The Dark Side of Light, as part of the Industrial Speaker Series.

Tomoko Akai, Leader of the Advanced Glass Group, AIST, Japan spoke about Sustainable Lighting: New Requirements, as part of the Industrial Speaker Series.

Popular Science Magazine Named ERC’s Boston University professor Hatice Altug to Brilliant 10, 2011

Patrick Masson, CTO, UMassOnline spoke about Collaboration and Fostering Co-creation through the use of enterprise wikis, as part of the Industrial Speaker Series.

President Obama Names Top U.S. Early Career Scientists and Engineers

ERC’s Boston University professor Hatice Altug article on “Large-Scale Plasmonic Microarrays for Label-Free High-Throughput Screening”, was featured on the cover of Lab on a Chip. Publication

Suppression of Non-Radiative Auger Processes, Dr. Alexander L. Efros, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC. Flyer

The Bright Future of Smart Lighting, Presented by Dr. Francis Rubinstein, Lead, Lighting Research Group, Building Technology Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as part of the Industrial Tutorial Series. Flyer

Silvia Mioc joins the Smart Lighting ERC as the Director of Industrial Collaborations

Dr. Silvia Mioc received her PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and her MBA from the Keller Graduate School of Management. Her professional experience spans displays, medical devices and optical technologies, in settings ranging from academia and national labs to startups, large companies and non-profits. In addition, she has been involved in working with state, local and regulatory agencies, and has lobbied federal legislators for sustained increased funding for R&D and Math and Science Education. She speaks 5 languages, and has done business in Europe and Asia.

Dr. Mioc comes to RPI after having been with Corning, Inc. since 2006 as a Business Development Manager in the Display Future’s Emerging Markets and Technologies group. In that role, she was a key player in bringing to the corporation the understanding of the latest developments in the display industry in order to feed and support early R&D projects in the pipeline. Among other responsibilities, she led the strategic external engagement with academia and industry. She also organized complex series of events targeted at increasing the visibility of Corning Display Futures group and establishing a dialogue with key thought leaders in the industry.

Prior to Corning, Dr.Mioc spent 8 years in the medical devices industry in both technical and business development roles. She worked in Colorado for the pulse oximetry division of Datex-Ohmeda, a Finnish company that became part of GE Healthcare in 2003.

In parallel, she has been involved with the Colorado Photonics Industry Association (CPIA), a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing the environment for optical technologies in Colorado. She has been active in the organization since 2001, being its president from 2003 to 2006. She spearheaded expanding program reach to strategically exploit synergies with biotech, medical devices, nanotech and defense/homeland security sectors, and formed numerous win-win partnerships with service providers to increase member benefits. Under Silvia’s leadership, CPIA steadily grew its impact, visibility, and reach at state level, nationally and internationally. Additionally, she led the transition of the association from an all-volunteer base to employing an executive director through funding secured via a grant from the state of Colorado.

Robert Karlicek is the new director of the Smart Lighting ERC

Dr. Robert F. Karlicek, Jr., a globally-known LED industry expert has joined RPI as Professor in the Electrical, Computer and System Engineering department and Director of the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center. Prior to joining RPI, he spent over 30 years in industrial research and R&D management positions with corporations including AT&T Bell Labs, EMCORE, General Electric, Gore Photonics, Microsemi, Luminus Devices and SolidUV. His technical experience includes epitaxial growth of high performance LEDs and lasers, advanced device fabrication and high power LED packaging, thermal management, control systems design and applications in solid state lighting as well as other novel LED uses such as IR and UV LED applications.

Dr. Karlicek is a frequent presenter at conferences and workshops. He obtained his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh and has over 40 published technical papers and 24 U.S. patents.

ERC present at the Santa Barbara Summit on Energy Efficiency in Santa Barbara, CA: Novel Applications of LEDs for Energy Savings A Systems Level View

Bob Karlicek, ERC Director, presented at the OIDA Green Photonics Forum, Santa Clara, CA: Smart Lighting:A Second Wave in Solid State Lighting?

Bob Karlicek, ERC Director, presented an invited talk at the SPIE Optics and Photonics in San Diego, CA: Smart Lighting: New Roles for Light in the Solid State Lighting World

Bob Karlicek, ERC Director, presented an invited talk at the Lester Eastman Conference in Troy, NY. Lighting: Past, Present and Future

ERC graduate student Alp Altar from Boston University receives best student presentation award for the paper “Light tunneling in multi-layered plasmonic crystals” at SPIE Optics and Photonics conference in San Diego, CA.

SiC Systems, Inc and the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center (ERC) awarded National Science Foundation Grant to develop Increased Efficiency Green LEDs

GOLDEN, COLORADO, and TROY, NY, August 19, 2010. The National Science Foundation awarded a $200,000 grant to SiC Systems, Inc. to partner with the Smart Lighting ERC in order to develop LEDs with increased efficiency.

SiC Systems’ unique ability to produce large area, 6″ Silicon Carbide substrates in different crystallographic orientations will be combined with the Smart Lighting ERC’s capability to develop advanced LEDs with higher performance than those routinely available today on sapphire substrates. While high power blue GaN LEDs are widely used now for solid state lighting applications, there are still significant barriers in developing efficient GaN LEDs at other wavelengths that will be needed to achieve high performance lighting systems with high color fidelity.

By combining advanced Silicon Carbide structures from SiC Systems with innovative LED growth and fabrication technology under development at RPI in Professor Wetzel’s group, this team will explore new approaches to driving GaN to higher levels of efficiency at a broader range of operating wavelengths than can be obtained today with conventional LED growth on sapphire substrates.

Additionally, this collaboration will train and engage graduate and undergraduate researchers in an area of great technological importance, both at SiC Systems and at the ERC. SicSystems Inc. anticipates as many as 25 new jobs will be created with the increased demand from this technological break through.

The awardees would like to acknowledge the SBIR/STTR and ERC programs for providing the funding.

Smart Lighting ERC Held the Inaugural Event for the Industrial Speaker Series

The Smart Lighting ERC Industrial Speaker Series at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is a seminar series aiming to present an industry perspective on smart lighting technologies and markets. In addition, in line with the ERC mission to teach students about life in industry, each speaker will be sharing their personal story of how they came into industry and how their career path has influenced their life.

The events are open to all RPI faculty and students, not only participants in the ERC. In addition, presentations will be made available live via Adobe Connect to the core partner institutions Boston University and The University of New Mexico, outreach partner schools Howard University, Morgan State University and Rose Hulman Institute of Technnology, as well as to the industrial members.

The opening of the series took place on Wednesday, September 15, 2010. Annette Finsterbusch, founder of Applied Ventures, the investing arm of industrial member Applied Materials, talked about “Investing in Solid State Lighting: the Past, the Present and the Future”. In front of a standing-room-only audience, Ms. Finsterbusch discussed the investment landscape of the lighting industry, focusing on the recent past and present opportunities. She also discussed how today’s early stage technology development fuels the future investment opportunity pipeline, and the key aspects of successful start-up companies that investors are looking for. The seminar ended in a lively questions and answers session with members of the audience. Graduate student Kayvan Rafiee from the Mechanical Engineering Department said “This was such a wonderful event and one of best talks at RPI I have ever been to!”

The next events in the series are presentations by the Industrial Advisory Board member Dr. Matt Stough from Osram Sylvania on October 13, 2010, and Scientific Advisory Board member Kevin Dowling, VP of Research and Development from MC10 on November 17, 2010.

Dr. Matthew A. Stough from Osram Sylvania talks about “Thinking Differently about LED Lighting”

Industrial Speaker SeriesThe second event in the Industrial Speaker Series filled again the room for Dr. Matthew Stough’s discussion of Osram’s view of the future of solid state lighting. Dr. Stough is a member of the Industrial Advisory Board of the center. The event was transmitted live to 9 remote sites.

Click here for the event flier that includes abstract.

Smart Lighting ERC Director Bob Karlicek presents “Lighting Systems that Think – Towards Autonomous Lighting Optimization and Control” at the 2014 Holst Symposium, organized by Philips Research and held at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, the Netherlands.