Measurement of light and color is an important aspect of many scientific, industrial and commercial activities. Without proper specification of the stimulus, vision science research cannot progress. Without the ability to perform radiometric measurements in the visible, ultraviolet and infrared spectral ranges, many manufacturing processes would be impossible. Without repeatable characterizations of object color and glossiness, the design of attractive architectural environments would be haphazard. Ensuring that measurements are sufficiently accurate, precise and repeatable is the joint responsibility of the government, academic, and industrial communities.
The Council for Optical Radiation Measurements (CORM) is an organization of industrial, academic and government professionals in photometry and radiometry coming together to promote and advance the changing needs of industry in the development of physical standards, calibration services and inter-laboratory collaboration programs. The CORM 2008 Annual Conference and Business Meeting was held from June 10–11, 2008, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, USA, with a workshop on solid state lighting standards on June 9 at Rensselaer's Lighting Research Center (LRC).
At the solid state workshop, chaired by Yoshi Ohno of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), presenters discussed the needs and gaps in standards for solid state lighting systems, focusing particularly on light-emitting diode technologies. Areas discussed by the attendees included performance under different thermal conditions, measurement procedures, and color specifications.
After a brief welcome by CORM President Ronald Daubach of OSRAM Sylvania, the four sessions of the main conference got underway, with each session carrying a specific theme forward. A session on visual and non-visual responses to light was chaired by John Bullough of the LRC, and contained presentations from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Cornell University, Underwriters Laboratories, Lighthouse International and the LRC on visual health, circadian photobiology and mesopic vision. Angelo Arecchi of SphereOptics chaired the following session on measurement, with presentations from NIST, National Research Council Canada, Sun Chemical Corporation and Rensselaer on photometry and spectroradiometry, transmittance and reflectance measurements, and optical imaging.
Ronald Gibbons from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University chaired a session on transportation lighting, with presentations from NIST, Virginia Tech, the US Naval Observatory, Marshall Design, Luminous Design, Boeing, LRC and Display Design Consultants on retroreflection, field photometry, light pollution, headlamp glare and aviation lighting. The final session was chaired by Wendy Davis of NIST and included presentations from NIST, LRC, RIT, OSRAM Sylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on color rendering and fluorescent pigments and coatings.
On the evening of June 10, the Franc Grum Memorial Lecture and Dinner was held at the historic Franklin Plaza in downtown Troy. The keynote speaker was the LRC's director, Mark Rea, who gave a stimulating and challenging lecture on metrics for lighting entitled ‘What over Watts?’.
This special issue of the Journal of Modern Optics contains papers submitted by conference attendees and non-attendees alike, in response to a call for papers related to the themes of the 2008 conference. We gratefully acknowledge the editorial staff of the Journal, including Ms Elena Chirciu, Ms Jayne Kay, Dr Vasudevan Lakshminarayanan and Dr Jonathan Marangos, for their able assistance in compiling this issue. We also appreciate the efforts of CORM members and directors who assisted with peer review and suggested appropriate reviewers.
For more information about CORM and its activities, visit www.cormusa.org.