In an ongoing effort to encourage the next generation of students to find successful career opportunities in the lighting design industry, the Lighting Industry Association (LIA) and Holophane Europe, Ltd.—a leader in luminaire and lighting design for over 100 years—visited 150 students at Loughborough University. The program focused on exposing students to exterior lighting design via a challenge: to design an exterior lighting product and design brief to be judged by a panel from Holophane, thus encouraging the group to research facets of the industry such as standards, regulations, existing products and market sectors. The result of the challenge is that the top three students selected by the panel have been invited to the Sprint LIA Technical Forum to present their designs to industry stakeholders. LIA CEO Ayça Donaghy said, “This was a fantastic initiative, and I am grateful to everyone involved in making it such a success. The design work from all of the students, and especially the winners, was so impressive. The lighting industry has a bright future if these talented individuals are an example of who may join the sector over the next few years.”
The first-place winner, Aaron Varghese Abraham (pictured), designed a lantern for use in the desert that uses UV rays to illuminate scorpions. The second-place winner, Oscar Warman, designed a solar-powered streetlight that encourages birds to nest, including a built-in area for nests. The third-place winner, Laruen Adams, designed a solution for night fishers: an environmental- and wildlife-conscious lamp to attract carp and illuminate fishers’ setups.
To learn more about this program as well as other initiatives for youth in lighting, visit www.thelia.org.uk.