Opinions

Opinions & Appointments

Appointments | May 08, 2021

Matt Sturgess Joins the LIA as New CEO

The Lighting Industry Association (LIA) welcomes Matt Sturgess to the position of CEO of The LIA. He took up his position on 12 April 2021, replacing interim CEO, Paul Crisp, who has been doing an exceptional job supporting the LIA team and its Members as they plan for the post 2020 era. Read more »

Opinions | Jan Denneman | Apr 27, 2021

Good Light is as Important as Good Food and Good Air

Scientific studies make very clear that good light is crucial for our health and well-being. Good light does more than enable us to see. It is the most important “zeitgeber” for our brain and body and synchronizes our internal circadian clock. Why are the scientific findings so often not being applied in practice and must we all spend our lives in biological darkness? Read more »

LeddarTech | Olaf Berlien | Appointments | Apr 13, 2021

LeddarTech Announces the Appointment of Dr Olaf Berlien to Its Board of Directors

LeddarTech®, a global leader in Level 1-5 ADAS and AD sensing technology, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Olaf Berlien to its Board of Directors, further enhancing the diversity and industry expertise of the Board. Read more »

Appointments | LightingEurope | Mar 29, 2021

LightingEurope Board and President Elected

The General Assembly elected on 26 March a new Executive Board for a 2-year mandate. The Executive Board consists of an equal number of representatives of national lighting associations and corporate members of LightingEurope and has the role of implementing the LightingEurope strategy and work plans. Read more »

HLB Lighting Design | Appointments | Mar 08, 2021

HLB Lighting Design – Barbara HORTON Retires, Carrie HAWLEY to Serve as CEO

HLB Lighting Design has announced that Barbara Horton, CLD, FIALD, Senior Principal and Co-Chief Executive Officer has retired. Senior Principal Carrie Hawley, IALD, MIES, LEED AP will assume the role of sole CEO following Barbara’s retirement. Read more »

Appointments | Mar 02, 2021

Acuity Brands Announces Trevor PALMER as New President of Acuity Lighting and Lighting Controls Business

Acuity Brands, Inc. announced Trevor S. Palmer was appointed President of the Company’s lighting and lighting controls business (ABL). Effective March 1, 2021, Trevor assumes responsibility for driving innovation across the Company’s lighting and lighting controls products, growing market share, and executing the digital transformation of the business. Trevor has over 27 years of experience in the building technology industry and recently served as Senior Vice President of Acuity Brands’ Digital Lighting Networks business. Read more »

Opinions | Mar 01, 2021

Future Strategic Directions for the Lighting Industry

As another wave of restrictions enters into force across Europe, it’s important to keep not only our chins up but also our eyes open, looking out at the next set of opportunities and challenges coming our way. Read more »

Opinions | Commentary | Feb 27, 2021

From Kelly to Double Dynamic Lighting

by Henrik CLAUSEN. Henrik has worked in the lighting sector for almost 30 years, collaborating with architects, interior designers and specialist lighting designers. Read more »

Commentary | HCL | Health + Wellbeing | Jan 13, 2021

Good Light Helps Prevent Winter Dip

The holidays are over, it's cold and dark, we prefer to sit inside. Nevertheless, you need a daily portion of good light: it makes you more energetic, happier, and healthier. Make sure that you go outside for a good time every day and that you also have enough good light indoors during the day. Daylight is best, but there are also good alternatives with LED lighting and light therapy lamps. Read more »

Resources | Full Spectrum LEDs | Jürgen Honold | Opinions | Nov 30, 2020

Tech-Talks BREGENZ with Jürgen HONOLD, Dipl.Des.(FH)

At LpS 2019, Jürgen Honold, Dipl.Des.(FH), and his co-presenter Dr. Martijn Dekker, held a very interesting and remarkable lecture about photobio-modulation (PBM). LED professional wanted to learn more and asked Jürgen Honold for an interview. As Technical Fellow, he is responsible for Seaboroughs' advanced lighting research and development and exactly the right person to talk with when it comes to HCL and related technologies and applications. Dr. Martijn Dekker, CEO of Seaborough accompanied him and gave an introduction with additional insights into Seaborough and the company's structure and strategy Read more »

Adopting an LED More Suited to Circadian Entrainment

Since the introduction of LED lights, a lot has been said about risks of blue light for ocular health on the one hand, and the opportunity of circadian entrainment, on the other hand. While a controversial discussion on the first topic is ongoing, the second topic is well accepted. To solve both issues, Bill Chan, President of LiteController Inc. proposes the application of 465-470nm pumped phosphor converted white LEDs with a content of 86% - 92% blue-turquoise light and 8% - 14% blue-violet light. In the article he concentrates on the second topic and proves the benefit of regulating the circadian entrainment more efficiently, maintaining a high typical efficacy of 150 lm/W and good color rendering of CRI 80+ ideally supporting the WELL Building Standard. Read more »

Interview | TTB | Signify | LiFi | Sep 26, 2020

LiFi Communication Interview

For over a decade, research in LiFi has been intensified with amazing results. When Musa Unmehopa, an authority in the lighting industry, took on the position of Head of Ecosystems and Strategic Alliances for LiFi at Signify, it was clear that LED professional would have to report what he has to say about the status of LiFi and his future plans. We have known him since he was appointed Secretary General at Zhaga at the beginning of 2014. Since then he was always in charge at Philips Lighting, now Signify, in some capacity, also representing the company in the Connected Lighting Alliance. In addition, his resumé marks him as a specialist in standardization and a technology advisor. Read more »

Business News | Event News | LpS Digital | Awards | Sep 23, 2020

LpS Digital – Awards and Announcements

As part of yesterday's LpS Digital Live Event, which was broadcast directly from the Festspielhaus Bregenz, the LpS Digital 2020 Awards were presented, and event announcements were published. Read more »

Kenneth Martin from Zumtobel about Comfortable Lighting

Kenneth Martin has been specifying, qualifying an developing components and characterization setups for LED light sources within the Zumtobel Group since 2006. With his expertise on spectral measurements and applications, he supports integrative lighting solutions topics. He gathered valuable knowledge in physics and optical system engineering while studying at the University of Applied Sciences RV-Weingarten, during the internships at a quality assurance department of a reflector aluminum manufacturer and the optical development department of Zumtobel. He combines his enthusiasm for lighting and sustainable construction engineering with a DIY philosophy. Read more »

Paradigm Changes in Lighting Are Challenging Lighting Companies

Fabien Bubendorff has a Master in Electronic Engineering and has 10 years' experience in the lighting industry. He has spent more than 13 years living in China. He worked as a Product Manager for a Retail Lighting Company, for the Last 5 years he was responsible for Wever&Ducré as the Head of R&D in China and for the last years Head of R&D at XAL in Austria. Now he has founded an independent consultancy to support European Lighting Companies to deal with these future challenges. He specialized in finding the optimal balance between function and cost to increase product profitability. Read more »

TechTalks BREGENZ - Dr. Christoph Wächter, Senior Scientist at Fraunhofer IOF, Germany

Research topics have become more important with LEDs and LED lighting micro optics and freeform optics. A new approach based on an IP for a fly's eye condenser from 1928, filed by Zeiss Ikon AG that extends possibilities and allows for new applications was presented ‚at LpS 2019. The jury was so impressed with the paper that it won the Scientific Award 2019. Dr. Guenther Sejkora and Arno Grabher-Meyer from LED professional talked to Dr. Christoph Wächer, co-author and presenter of the paper about his approach, his career and work. Dr. Christoph Wächter is a senior scientist at Fraunhofer IOF. Read more »

Resources | Tech-Talks Bregenz | Health + Environment | Quality | May 04, 2020

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Prof. Ruairí O'Brien, Founder of Ruairí O'Brien Lighting Design

Ruairí O'Brien, associate professor and head of the Architecture and Visual design department at the German University in Cairo and CEO of Ruairí O'Brien. Architektur. Licht Raumkunst, surprised and delighted the audience with his lecture at LpS 2016 when he talked about allowing darkness. He expressed the same sentiments in a caption for a figure in the proceedings booklet: "The future in Dresden is not lighting excess - the future is Re-Darkness with intelligent SSL concepts." This year, Ruairí held two lectures at TiL in which he emphasized how important a thorough application of light is in respect to culture, ethics, and environment. In addition to his work, these interesting statements made it made a Tech-Talk Bregenz with him a top priority. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | Smart Lighting + IoT | Health + Wellbeing | May 04, 2020

Personal Lighting Profiles Might Be the Key to Creating a Natural "Work Light Balance"

Commentary from LpR 76: Henrik Clausen has been involved in lighting for over 30 years in both commercial and academic positions. In 1996, he became the Managing Director of Fagerhult Lighting in Denmark, and held that position until 2004, when he founded the Fagerhult Lighting Academy. In 2015 he also became Head of Research for Fagerhult. He holds a position as professor in Lighting Design at AAU in Copenhagen. He guest lectures at various Universities around the world. He speaks worldwide, primarily addressing the human and emotional aspects of light and lighting design. Read more »

Resources | Tech-Talks Bregenz | Wilfried Kramb | Opinions | May 04, 2020

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Wilfried Kramb, Interior & Lighting Designer, a∙g Licht

TTB from LpR 75: The value of lighting design and light planning has always been underestimated, despite it becoming more important with the rise of Solid-State-Lighting. This is a fact that the public doesn't realize, even though the industry does. Digitalization, compared with the special properties of LED lighting and the aim of the lighting industry to establish their IoT hubs, is a new challenge. This is even more apparent when trying to integrate light sources directly in building structures. Responsibilities and tasks are no longer clearly separated between the different disciplines of architect, lighting designer, IT planner and electro planner. Guenther Sejkora and Arno Grabher-Meyer talked with Wilfried Kramb, owner and CEO of a·g Licht, about these tendencies and topic. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | Health + Environment | Quality | May 04, 2020

Providing Better Light Should Still be the Focus of the SSL Industry

Commentary from LpR 75: As President of Bardsley Consulting, Norman advises industry, government and academia on solid-state lighting, flat panel displays and energy efficiency, with special emphasis on diffuse lighting and organic electronics. He is a member of the Technical Advisory Team for the Solid-State Lighting Program of the US Department of Energy. Dr. Bardsley also acts as Chief Analyst for the International Solid-State Lighting Alliance (ISA) and is a member of the UNEP Expert Task Force on LED Lighting and Controls. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | UV | Disinfection | Feb 05, 2020

Selecting the UV LED Wavelength for Purification Applications

Patrick Durand is the Worldwide Technical Director at Future Lighting Solutions (FLS) with over 15 years of experience in the solid state lighting industry. Patrick leads the FLS Technical Marketing teams and FLS laboratory teams located in multiple regions around the world with the objective of providing world-class support to lighting OEMs in developing luminaires with the latest SSL technology from the light source to the complete system incorporating the LED driver, optic, thermal management and intelligent control solutions. Read more »

Environment | Commentary | Resources | Health + Environment | Dec 16, 2019

Care, Caution & Awareness Are Needed When Using LED Lights

Kyra Xavia is a researcher, educator and investigative journalist based in New Zealand. Her roles as general secretary of the Light and Lighting Research Consortium (LLRC), delegate for the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), New Zealand Ambassador for Women in Lighting 2019, and co-leader of the Dunedin Dark Skies Group, involve educating decision-makers and the public about the importance of responsible lighting, nocturnal placemaking and the value of darkness. Recognised in New Zealand and abroad for her advocacy in these matters, Kyra has co-authored research papers and published articles specific to this subject. Kyra has recently been awarded with The Dark Sky Defender Award. Read more »

Resources | Tech-Talks Bregenz | Laser Technology | Dec 16, 2019

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Julian Carey, Marketing Manager at SLD Laser

In 2016, Nobel Laureate, Professor Shuji Nakamura held a key note speech at LpS. As the founder of Soraa and SLD Laser, he named laser lighting as the next, innovative step and disruption in lighting. He emphasized the need to focus on light quality and the tailoring of LED lighting to the natural needs of humas, providing light that mimics sunlight as closely as possible. It was therefore self-evident that LED professional would invite Julian Carey, the Product and Technical Marketing Manager at SLD Laser, for a Tech-Talk when he was at the LpS 2018 in Bregenz. We asked him for an update on the status of laser lighting, business strategies and future prospects and how laser lighting has developed since Professor Nakamura's statements in 2016. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | Quality | Nov 15, 2019

Commentary: Providing Better Light Should Still be the Focus of the SSL Industry

J. Norman Bardsley, PhD - As President of Bardsley Consulting, Norman advises industry, government and academia on solid-state lighting, flat panel displays and energy efficiency, with special emphasis on diffuse lighting and organic electronics. Read more »

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dr. Scott Wade, Technical & Certification Manager, DiiA

Dr. Scott Wade has been the Technical & Certification Manager for DALI/DiiA since 2013 and has been an industry expert member of the IEC62386 standardization team for about 14 years. He was invited to hold a lecture at the LpS 2018 about the founding of DiiA for the purpose of taking over the DALI trademark from ZVEI and discussed measures that were taken to further develop the standard and its certification process and make the DALI concept future proof with DALI-2. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | Aug 13, 2019

What the Heck Is Future Proof?

Commentary from LpR 72: The first time the question about future proofing LED systems came up seriously, was at LightFair 2018 when Siegfried Luger interviewed Patrick Durand. Since then, it has been the buzzword throughout the industry. Discussions concerning future proofing are often limited to wireless communications, IoT and some type of AI. But isn't there more? Read more »

Medical | Tech-Talks Bregenz | Resources | Health + Environment | Jul 29, 2019

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dr. Octavio Perez, Adjunctant Researcher, Mt. Sinai Hospital

Dr. Perez received the LED professional Scientific Award 2018 for his paper on "Light and ED Clinical Wellness and Performance Improvement", which was published in LpR 70. The evaluation jury had the following to say about why they selected his paper: "The paper is based on the clear definition of the research question, hypothesis and objective of the research. The methodology of the screening study is described in detail and both subjective and objective parameters have been measured. Although Emergency Department lighting is a very special application, the paper provides interesting results." This interview provides background information on Octavio Perez, his work in general, his opinion on human centric lighting risks, opportunities and applications and how he became involved in this interesting research topic. Dr. Perez also provides additional details about the presented paper. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | May 16, 2019

Well-Being, Light and Exhibition Lighting

Commentary from LpR 71: Well-being is the state of feeling healthy and happy, a good or satisfactory condition of existence, including the emotional and psychological sphere. In 1810, Goethe published a theory based on a human-based approach, combining visual appearance with harmony, culture, sensations and psychology. His color wheel was entitled "allegorical, symbolic, mystic use of color" and was composed of six hues, i.e. red (the beautiful), orange (the noble), yellow (the good), green (the useful), blue (the common) and violet (the unnecessary). The position on the wheel was harmonically relevant and in particular the colors in opposite position generated a strong psychological contrast and were called "opposite colors". Primary colors were yellow, blue and red, and the opposites were green, violet and orange, respectively. Goethe's wheel and the particular matching of opposites soon became popular and was used by the Impressionism movement, especially by Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. In this artistic movement, the special impact given by the combination of opposite colors were deliberately aimed to create special psychological effects and sensations. Read more »

Health + Environment | Outdoor Applications | Resources | Tech-Talks Bregenz | Mar 25, 2019

Tech-Talks BREGENZ - Dr. Maja Grubisic, Researcher, Free University Berlin & Leibniz-Institute

Awareness of the ecological impact of technologies is becoming more important since climate change due to industrialization cannot be denied. LED lighting is one of the technologies that is deemed as a contributor in helping to reduce the impact caused by wasted energy. Unfortunately, light pollution, due to inefficient energy usage, is not the only problem. Besides the more recognized pollution from pesticides and chemical pollutants, light pollution also disturbs ecology and wildlife. Dr. Grubisic, Researcher at the Free University Berlin & Leibniz-Institute, has been working on this problem for more than five years now. She has written an article, also in this issue, concerning this. At the LED professional Symposium she was also good enough to grant this interview, providing some background information, explaining why light pollution is such an issue in biology and why this topic should be of concern to all of us. Read more »

Resources | Commentary | Mar 25, 2019

An Industry at a Crossroads

Commentary from LpR 70: We often hear grumbles about the lighting industry suffering under low margins and high costs. Primarily, this is true for most traditional luminaire manufacturers but not as much for innovative controls and driver manufacturers, and even less so for innovative newcomers who understand the semiconductor business that has taken over a share of the luminaire manufacturers' revenue. Read more »