Mark Rea, Director of the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has taken an academic sabbatical for the upcoming fiscal year. During this time, Dr. Rea will focus on developing two new LRC initiatives: the Glenn W. Bailey Memorial Fellowship, which supports activities that integrate the business of lighting into the education of graduate students at the LRC, and a program related to plant pathology and horticultural lighting. He will also continue to work on existing funded research projects.
Mariana Figueiro, LRC Light & Health Program Director, has been named Acting Director and will lead the center during this time. Dr. Figueiro has been with the LRC for 20 years, where she started as a graduate student in the LRC’s Master of Science in Lighting program. She continued as a staff scientist at the LRC and in 2004, obtained her PhD from Rensselaer. In 2006, she was offered a tenure-track position as an assistant professor and in 2014, was promoted to full professor.
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