Dr. Elsebeth Kolmos is a senior scientist at the Center for Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications (LESA) Center. She joined the LESA team in 2019, where she leads plant research related to horticultural lighting, including LEDs. She brings experience from basic research on the molecular genetics of the circadian clock in plants and plant abiotic stress responses from her academic training and work in the plant biotechnology industry. She earned a PhD in genetics from the University of Cologne in Germany and performed her postdoctoral studies with Dr. Steve Kay at the University of Southern California.
Richard Neal is a staff engineer at LESA where he has designed and developed a number of horticultural systems, including research lighting systems, spectral measurement systems, and data management. Before joining LESA in 2018, he worked in cryogenic electronics and superconductor research for 14 years. During this time, he designed and built instrumentation and control systems for power conversion and energy storage prototypes used in naval and aerospace research. He has an MS in Electrical Engineering from Union Graduate College in Schenectady, New York.