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Latest News
LESA featured in Light Matters Newscast
LESA was recently featured in the August 2017 edition of Light Matters, an online newscast at photonics.com. The segments highlight LESA research in the Smart Conference Room Testbed and Plant Physiology Lab and features interviews with Center Director Robert Karlicek and graduate student Tianna-Kaye Woodstock. Two segments are available to view, A ‘Smart’ Lighting Revolution and a bonus feature Light Matters Extra: Center for Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications.
June 5, 2017
LESA, Cornell and NYSERDA announces the launch of a multidisciplinary consortium to reduce electricity use in greenhouses up to 70%. Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE), a seven-year $5 million project funded by NYSERDA, is being launched to transform the way greenhouses operate reducing both energy cost and carbon footprint. Dr. Tessa Pocock, Senior Research Scientist at LESA will lead the work at Rensselear.
July 14, 2017
Recent advances in solid state lighting technology are enabling the development of ‘designer’ crops, according to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute plant physiology expert Dr. Tessa Pocock, who serves as a senior research scientist at the Center for Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications (LESA). The impact of lighting on plants is the core focus for Pocock, who conducts research in both academic and industry settings around the mechanism of photosynthesis on plant development and regulation by light for traditional greenhouse crops and the emerging field of medicinal plants. Recently, Pocock and her team received a $25,000 grant from Dr. William Beers, Black Belt/Senior Systems Engineer at Current, powered by GE, to support continued work on sensing and signaling in plants.
March 4, 2017
LESA Alum Dr. Jessica Morrison has formed a startup, Helux Lighting, Inc to bring dynamic optical control to the market through microtechnology developed at Boston University. These micro-mirrors are an example of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) that can steer a beam of reflected light by applying a voltage. The tiny mirrors steer light faster that the human eye can detect and facilitate rapid control over light position, brightness, and illumination area. The competitive advantage of Helux technology is a tenfold reduction in size and lower cost when compared to existing mechanical systems for light control.
February 16, 2017
Industry Meets Academia: LESA has a Record-Setting Attendance at Annual Conference. The Center for Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications (LESA) held their 8th Annual Industry-Academia Days Conference on February 8-9, 2017 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Troy, NY. This annual conference brought together LESA researchers and students to showcase innovations in research initiatives and educational activities to industry representatives. This year’s conference had over 100 industry attendees from approximately 64 distinct organizations and was the largest conference we have held to date.
Accolades
L.E.D. A History of the Future of Light
The new book by veteran technology journalist Bob Johnstone entitled L.E.D. A History of the Future of Lighting is a detailed account of the radically changing lighting industry. Chapter 15 Selling Darkness includes an overview of LESA and its research vision of lighting systems that think. The book is published by CreateSpace and is available via Amazon.
May 8, 2017
Dr. Tessa Pocock was awarded the Robert W. Langhans Visiting Scholar at Cornell University, School of Integrative Plant Science. Each year this Visiting Scholar Program brings a renowned scientist in greenhouse technology and management to lecture and interact with students over the course of several days to their Ithaca campus. This year Dr. Pocock will spend May 8-10 on their campus and will provide a lecture entitled “Light Matters: Sensing and Signaling in Plants”. Dr. Pocock, Senior Research Scientist at LESA, is a world-renowned speaker and researcher on plant photosynthesis and plant development and regulation by light for traditional greenhouse crops and the emerging field of medicinal plants.
April 25, 2017
LESA graduate Jessica Morrison was chosen as one of ten innovators in Cohort Three of Cyclotron Road, an incubator at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that aims to bridge the science-to-product gap by investing in energy entrepreneurs through its two-year fellowship program. Dr. Jessica Morrison received her PhD in Physics from Boston University in 2016 and has since founded Helux Lighting as a spin-off of her work at LESA on beam-steering micro-mirrors. Applicants must go through a rigorous four-month long selection process. The ten innovators of Cohort Three represent eight universities across the US. The Cyclotron program innovators will begin their journey in May, 2017.
April 15, 2017
Chaitanya Ullal, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, and a Faculty member of the ERC, has won a Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation (NSF). He will use the five-year, $556,091 award to study the structure of hydrogels—jelly-like materials that have some of the properties of solids, but are largely composed of water. The CAREER Award is given to faculty members near the beginning of their academic careers and is one of the most competitive and prestigious awards given by the NSF to junior faculty.
March 20, 2017
Professor Connor Recognized as Innovator at 2017 ECEDHA Annual Conference
On Monday, March 20, 2017, Professor Kenneth Connor (RPI) was presented with the “Innovative Program Award” at the 2017 ECEDHA Annual Conference in Miramar Beach, Florida. Don Millard (NSF) summarized Ken’s contributions well, “Ken is loved by many and is a true innovator: he has the intellect and motivation to seek and see space that others don’t, he is not afraid to break from the norm, using past traditional wisdom.” This award is given to individual(s) or department(s) […]
Employment Opportunities
Titles below link directly to RPI Human Resources job description:
Research Engineer
Marketing & Outreach Manager
Spectra
Light Education: The State of Smart Lighting
Bob Karlicek, Director of LESA discusses the State of Smart Lighting in the November 2016 issue of Illuminations section of Residential Lighting.com.
Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications: A Vision Way Beyond Seeing
LESA: A Vision Way Beyond Seeing, an article which appeared in the May 17, 2016 online edition of West Coast Lighting Insider, highlights the work of the ERC. In the future, personalized lighting will interact with our presence, our environment and our activities. Lighting will change color, brightness and directionality, all the while transmitting data to our cellphones and wearable tech, networked with the Internet of Things (IoT). Implementing this vision is the purpose of the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center, newly rebranded as the Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications Engineering Research Center (LESA ERC).
Unlocking the World of Digitized Illumination
Watch this webinar and learn about “Unlocking the World of Digitized Illumination” as presented by Smart Lighting ERC Director Robert Karlicek at the Philip’s Educational Webinar Series. Future lighting systems will be informative, sensory, and integrated into everything!
A Smart Lighting Revolution
The Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center is developing the systems that will transform the way we live, work, and communicate.
Read the full article that appeared in the Rensselaer Alumni Magazine, Fall 2015. Rensselaer Alumni Magazine-SmartLight Fall2015
LESA by the Numbers (through 3/31/17)
New Businesses Started
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