LESA and Cornell have received a prestigious INFEWS award from the National Science Foundation for $2.4M to fund a program in advanced urban farming. This program focuses applied plant growth research on water use efficiency, transpiration and nutritional value optimization using engineered solutions for vertical farming. (more…)
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.
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) (more…)
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.
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.
Professor Steven R.J. Brueck of the University of New Mexico was elected as a 2015 Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and will be inducted on April 15, 2016. Dr. Brueck is a distinguished professor & professor emeritus in the Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Physics & Astronomy and the former director of the UNM Center for High Technology Materials. Dr. Brueck’s research in nanotechnologies spans the fields of semiconductors, biotechnology, lighting, and materials science. His principal research focus has been on the process of nanolithography, creating patterns that approach molecular scales. He is a prolific innovator and inventor and holds approximately 49 patents (2013).
Smart Lighting ERC Sr. Research Scientist Tessa Pocock was invited to speak at the 5th International Symposium on the Science and Technology of Lighting, May 22-27, 2016, at Shiran-Kaikan of Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center Senior Research Scientist Tessa Pocock will give the keynote address at the 2015 U.S. Department of Energy Solid-State Lighting Technology Development Workshop on November 17, 2015 at the Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Pocock’s talk, entitled “Tuning the Spectrum for Plant Growth” discusses 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.
This talk will share findings from the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center’s work to examine what we know about the effects of different portions of the spectrum on plant growth, and where future research will focus. Efforts around Dr. Pocock’s research include the fine tuning of light for urban and vertical farming opportunities.
“Thanks to recent advances in LED technologies, it is now possible to better elucidate the effects and functions of different portions of the spectrum to manipulate plants with unprecedented control and accuracy,,” said Dr. Pocock. “The fine-tuning of light spectra and controlled regulation of plant attributes is adding new sophistication to plant production.”
Light and plants expert Tessa Pocock, Ph.D., joined the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center (ERC) in 2013, leading the development of a new plant physiology lighting program. Her research focuses on plant photosynthesis, and plant development and regulation by light for traditional greenhouse crops and the emerging field of medicinal plants.
Prior to joining the Smart Lighting ERC, Dr. Pocock was director of research at Heliospectra, in Sweden, where she designed light-emitting diode (LED) regimes to reduce energy consumption, produce healthier plants, and improve the quality of greenhouse crops. For the last four years, she has been developing a biofeedback system in which the physiology of the plant regulates the spectrum and intensity of LED arrays, in collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology, under a prestigious grant from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra).
About the Smart Lighting ERC
Funded primarily by the National Science Foundation, the ERC is an interdisciplinary, multi-university center developing “Smart Lighting Systems that See and ThinkTM”. The ERC is developing lighting systems that do everything from automatically maximizing light quality and minimizing energy use by sensing occupant needs to lights that carry data, complementing and enlarging the Wi-Fi network with Li-Fi (or visible light communications); and controlling LED lighting to enhance plant growth for farming and ‘pharming’ applications.
The Center engages faculty members, graduate students, research staff, and undergraduates to work on research leading to smart lighting systems with adaptive and controllable properties. It joins academia, industry, and government in partnership to produce transformational engineered systems, along with engineering graduates who are adept at innovation and primed for leadership in the global economy. The Smart Lighting ERC is headquartered at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and partners with Boston University and The University of New Mexico to achieve its objectives. Visit the ERC website at: http://smartlighting.rpi.edu/.
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
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. (more…)
