Lighting Research Priorities

Successful research leads to both deeper understanding and greater ignorance. This is because as knowledge expands, so do the unknowns. Readers of LEUKOS likely have enough research questions to occupy a lifetime. Prioritization is prudent, so that time and money are spent wisely.

IES adopted a Strategic Plan for 2014 to 2020 that identifies discovery as one of the fundamental pillars of the Society [IES 2014]. In 2015, IES formed a Strategic Research Advisory Panel that recently completed a report describing four broad research priorities:

• Refine knowledge about lighting and visual processes

• Understand the impact of light exposure on human health

• Foster the integration of lighting into the holistic built environment

• Demonstrate the value of quality lighting.

IES is now developing an actionable plan that will support these broad topical areas. IES will endeavor to form broad alliances, in part because significant financial resources are needed to address large research problems, but also because collaborating on shared goals can broaden and amplify positive outcomes.

The International Commission on Illumination (CIE) is also now in the latter stages of developing a strategic research plan. Later this year CIE plans to issue an overall research strategy with 10 topical priorities, followed-by separate documents for each of CIE’s 7 divisions, each with about 5 topical priorities. The high-level priorities for CIE are [Ohno and others 2016]:

• Color quality of LED light sources related to perception and preference

• Application of CIE 2006 colorimetry

• New calibration sources and illuminants for photometry, colorimetry, and radiometry

• Visual appearance

• Integrated glare metric for various lighting applications

• Recommendation for healthful lighting and non-visual effects of light

• Adaptive, intelligent, and dynamic lighting

• Recommendations for conditional lighting, aging population, and visual impairment

• Metrology for advanced photometric and radiometric devices

• Color reproduction and its quality measurement of 3D object

For more than a decade the US Department of Energy has been developing and annually updating technology roadmaps for solid state lighting (SSL) [DOE 2016a]. DOE’s most recent LED-based lighting research and development priorities are squarely focused on technology development [Bardsley and others 2015]:

• Emitter materials

• Down-converter materials

• Encapsulation materials

• Novel emitter architectures

• Higher integration levels

• Novel luminaires

DOE has a separate list of OLED-based lighting research and development priorities [Bardsley and others 2015]:

• Materials research

• Light extraction

• Luminaire development

• Improved manufacturing technologies

• Manufacturing on flexible substrates

DOE has also identified additional priorities, but acknowledged that they do not fit into their typical funding opportunity announcement (FOA) framework. In other words, DOE recognizes the importance of the following topics [Bardsley and others 2015], but is unlikely to solicit and fund proposals on these topics from entities outside of DOE:

• Smart controls and sensors

• Power supply reliability and performance metrics

• LED and OLED system reliability

• Human physiological response to lighting including productivity benefits

• Light quality research and characterization

The above lists make clear that IES and CIE place emphasis on advancing understanding of the relationships between light and people, and that DOE is focused on source technologies. Importantly, and unfortunately, IES and CIE do not have resources to support large-scale research efforts, whereas DOE has capably used its technology roadmaps to prioritize topics and develop FOAs [DOE 2016b]. Despite the different topical emphases and availability of resources, IES, CIE, and DOE are all working to improve the lighted environment for the benefit of the public good.