What is your role in WHIT?
We created lighting solutions in WHIT to demonstrate that lighting is a consumable and is as important as food to the wellbeing of our bodies.
What inspired you to rethink lighting?
While working with NASA, we examined how light could affect the built environment and profoundly affect those living in it. But once my first child was born, I really set myself to rethink how to reorient light. Treating light as a nutrient to our health and wellness. Approaching light as not simply an externality, but instead through the lens as something we and our environment are constantly consuming.
Why is your area important to a person's health and wellbeing?
Light is responsible for so much of our bioactivity, health and wellness. Light is actually the organizing energy of pretty much everything we consider alive on earth. As humans, we take our daily clock reset signal from the qualities of light surrounding us. If the wrong signal (or light) is received at the inappropriate time of day, we throw our systems off. Our physiology, hormones, metabolism and our bodies ability to heal become distorted. The right light, at the right time of day, maintains and optimized our natural function.
Why did you choose to work at WHIT?
WHIT offers a wonderful opportunity to collaborate with like-minded, forward thinkers. We have the ability to demonstrate technologies and novel designs that are capable of improving our lives today. The curation that has been accomplished at WHIT fascinates me every time I am present. I continue to learn from the group whose efforts are on display. So, why WHIT ...it makes me better at what I do.
What have you learned from your collaboration at WHIT?
The main takeaway has been a deeper understanding of the opportunity and challenges faced by my co-innovators in the space. This has made me attempt to look at new ways I might apply technologies to different areas in a home environment. I am appreciative of a healthful environment for both WHIT and those of us working in the space, to build on something larger than any of us could have done alone.
What are you hoping to accomplish over the next year?
Much of what I will be working on is expanding on the concepts demonstrated in WHIT and reaching even further into how our bodies consume light. There are several areas in both early childhood through elder care, where I believe light will be found to improve conditions that are troubling today. I believe that if I can convey the basic thought that light is a nutrient, that it penetrates and is consumed by us, it will become intuitive to understand how light impacts and can improve our nature.