News

Feb 1, 2012: 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. [...]

Feb 1, 2012: 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". [...]

Jan 12, 2012: ERC's Renssellaer professor Linda Schadler named Russell Sage Professor. [...]

Nov 7, 2011: 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. [...]

Oct 17, 2011: President Obama named ERC's Boston University professor Hatice Altug as the recipient of Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. [...]

Oct 11, 2011: Popular Science Magazine Named ERC's Boston University professor Hatice Altug to Brilliant 10, 2011. [...]

Jul 31, 2011: 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. [...]

Jul 25, 2011: 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.

Jul 15, 2011: The Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center successfully passed its NSF third-year renewal site review!

Jun 9, 2011: Energy@Rensselaer: Moving Smarter LEDs From the Laboratory to the Marketplace. [...]

May 23, 2011: Energy@Rensselaer: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Illuminates the Future of Lighting. [...]

May 17, 2011: 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.

May 5, 2011: The ERC welcomes Silicon Core Technologies as an Affiliate Member. [...]

April 28, 2011: The Smart Lighting ERC welcomes Epistar as the latest industrial member. [...]

April 26, 2011: 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" [...]

March 31, 2011: 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". [...]

March 24, 2011: 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. [...]

March 7, 2011: Video of panel discussion "Taking A University Technology to Market" at core partner University of New Mexico is now online. [...]

March 4, 2011: Student elevator pitch contest from our Industry-Academia Day featured in Inside Rensselaer, and videos of 3 winners online at YouTube. [...]

March 1, 2011: Presentations from the Smart Lighting ERC's Industry-Academia Day conference are now available for download. [...]

February 25, 2011: 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". [...]

February 8, 2011: Student Elevator Pitch Competition at the Second Annual Smart Lighting ERC Industry – Academia Day [...]

The second annual Industry-Academia Day for the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center was held in Boston on February 8, 2011. Researchers and graduate students from all three core partner institutions, Rensselaer, Boston University, and the University of New Mexico, gathered to discuss their 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 retreat where ERC faculty and students engaged in strategic planning followed the public day. Details can be viewed on the event website at http://smartlighting.rpi.edu/events/academiaday.shtml. 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.

The highlight of the day was the Student Elevator Pitch Competition. In this annual competition, ‘elevator pitch’ does not refer to the usual pitch given to investors, but refers to discussing one’s research in a concise manner and integrating it in the bigger picture. Developing this skill is something that the ERC believes is a differentiator for its students and will better prepare them for working in industry. The motto is “Presentations for Industry, Judged by Industry” and the judges are members of the Industrial Advisory Board (IAB). The ERC’s Innovation Partners, Center For Economic Growth in Albany (CEG), STC.UNM in Albuquerque, and Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston, were instrumental in coaching the students to develop successful elevator pitches. Boston University Office of Technology Commercialization provided $1000 in funds for prizes.

The framework used was to ask the students to answer three questions – what real-life problem their research is addressing, how they solve it in a unique way, and what impact it will have for society and in achieving the Smart Lighting ERC mission. They only had 90 seconds to accomplish this and could use a single Power Point slide to express the ideas visually.

Preparations began long before the event. A worksheet developed in conjunction with CEG was designed to help them express the key points of their research and formulate them into short, meaningful statements designed to leave an impression. A slide template was also provided to assist the students in highlighting their main points through visuals. At Rensselaer the coaching session was video-recorded and students were given their individual segments to aid them with further practice.

A preliminary competition was held the evening before the public event, where the Student Leadership Council picked 9 finalists out of the 25 students participating. The finalists gave their presentations in front of all attendees. The judges scored presentations based on clarity of the problem statement, expertise about the subject matter, explanation of the work’s impact, poise/public speaking style, and slide design, and provided general written feedback to each student. In addition to the IAB, every industrial participant in the audience was invited to participate, and many took up the offer. In total, each student received feedback from 27 industrial representatives – in a sense, making everyone a winner, not only the top three selected by the IAB.

Christoph Stark (“Green GalnN nano and micro LEDs”), Peng Tao (“High Refractive Index Encapsulant Materials for Light Emitting Diode”), and Jiaxiang Zhang (“Systems Modeling and Control of Circadian Rhythm”) were selected as the three winners of the competition. They were awarded $300 each while the six other finalists received $25 each. Peng Tao was chosen to move on to an inter-ERC elevator pitch competition at the annual NSF meeting of the ERCs this coming December.

2010 News Archive