Troy, NY--The Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will celebrate 25 years of lighting research and eduction on March 20, 2013. The event will include a keynote, panel discussion, LRC tours and demonstrations, and a reception and dinner. The event will be open to the public and tickets are available at the LRC's website: www.lrc.rpi.edu.

LRC Director Mark Rea has written a book to commemorate the anniversary and dedicated to the notion that society undervalues light, largely because its benefits are not properly measured. The book will be released in January 2013 and available at the SPIE website. Rea says, “The mission is nothing less than to change lighting practice—-to bring value to lighting, and to define and measure benefits as well as costs.”

The LRC was established in 1988 by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and has since has built an international source for objective information on lighting technologies, applications, and the human response to light. LRC focus areas and recent news include:

- Research in light and health, particularly the effects of light on circadian rhythms, is directly improving the lives of children and adolescents, night-shift nurses, submariners, and people with Alzheimer’s disease
- The application of solid-state lighting, bridging the gap between development of new technology and the end product, such airplane interiors
- Improving roadway visibility systems, working to optimize the efficiency, safety, and appearance of fixed roadway lighting, lighting on vehicles, and traffic lights
- International projects including the development of the Regional Centre for Lighting in Sri Lanka and quality assurance testing for Africa
- Independent testing of lighting products: the LRC photometry lab is the only university lighting laboratory accredited by the National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program.