Finelite employee shares award with researchers
Union City, CA – 05/16/2013 – Aaron Smith, product development engineer at Finelite Inc., has received the distinguished Leon Gaster Award from the Society of Light and Lighting for the paper, “Conceptual design metrics for daylighting,” published in Lighting Research & Technology last year. The award will be presented at the Society’s Annual General Meeting and Awards evening on May 28, 2013 at the London Irish Centre in London.
Smith, the former research specialist on the team, shares the coveted honor with two former colleagues: Russ Leslie, associate director and professor at the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer, and Leora Radetsky, research scientist.
A Boon for Designers
Developed through a project sponsored by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), the paper tackled the important subject of applying daylighting metrics early in the building conceptual design phase. Until their publication, this was a source of extensive research and debate, with no agreed upon metric for well-daylit buildings. Designers and architects had to rely on either overly complex simulation software, or overly simple general assumptions.
A Healthier Building
In the paper, Smith and his colleagues proposed a new concept called “the daylighting dashboard”, a new way to visualize a building design’s daylighting potential. The dashboard uses eight design goals including average illuminance, coverage, diffuse daylight and solar heat gain.
It is also takes into consideration the benefits of light on human health. A healthy environment is a space that has proper daylight, which can promote a better circadian rhythm for more daytime alertness and more restful sleep at night.
Now with the new model, architects and designers can clearly see any performance weakness early in the design phase so they have ample opportunity to address those issues, or find appropriate lighting expertise to guide them toward better daylit buildings.
“We propose eight minimum components and a simple way to estimate performance at the very beginning of building design,” said Leslie. “The daylighting dashboard allows for flexibility in precision, calculation software, or bracketing values for the eight goals, which can be prioritized in the context of individual projects, rating systems, or code requirements.”
Links:
Lighting Research & Technology: Conceptual design metrics for daylighting paper
https://lrt.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/10/20/1477153511423076
USGBC: Patterns to Daylight Schools for People and Sustainability Pdf (8mb)
https://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/daylighting/pdf/DaylightingPatternBook_Final.pdf
About Aaron
As a product development engineer at Finelite, Smith works on the development of energy efficient, high quality, and sustainable lighting products.
His past experience includes eight years of application engineering in the field of solid-state lighting for Marktech Optoelectronics, an electronics distributor. In 2010, he completed his Master of Science in Lighting at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lighting Research Center (LRC), and continued on at the LRC as a senior lighting researcher until 2012.
He is co-author of several lighting papers with topics that include daylighting metrics, light and health, energy efficiency and transportation lighting. He has also received several honors including the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) Award of Merit, IES Future Leader in Lighting, and National Association of Home Builders Best Integration of Technology Silver Achievement Award.
About Finelite
For over twenty years, Finelite has brought innovation and unmatched customer service to the lighting industry. Finelite’s core mission is to develop more energy-efficient lighting solutions and products for offices, educational and healthcare facilities. The company works in partnership with the California Energy Commission and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to develop best practices in lighting to achieve maximum energy savings.
Please visit https://www.finelite.com to learn more about our sustainable products and U.S. manufacturing facilities.