Shining the Light for Health
12 september 2018 lighting design lighting education creative lighting design light4health achievements in science
New Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project LIGHT4HEALTH will be officially launched by universities from Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Russia, the UK and the USA on 4 October 2018. Over three years, LIGHT4HEALTH (Health Research-Based Innovative Open Educational Resources and Tools for Lighting Design Students and Professionals) will develop a novel educational course to teach health research methods and findings to lighting designers at graduate level. Submitted under 2018 Erasmus+ call for proposals, the project has been granted a total funding of €429,062.
The key application of health research knowledge in the lighting design profession is for developing Human Centric Lighting, which can be seen as an element of preventive healthcare. By balancing visual, emotional and biological benefits of lighting for humans, it promotes good vision and simultaneously satisfies human emotional and biological needs. Did you know that light also stimulates non-visual effects on our psychology and physiology? Given that every human is constantly exposed to lighting, massive introduction of Human Centric Lighting could have a significant social and economic impact for the European Union.
Project partners will benefit from Erasmus+ funding to develop together a cross-disciplinary course on the intersection of lighting design and health research by selecting the most relevant health research methods, tools, and findings in Neurology, Photobiology, Neuroendocrinology, Neurobehavioral Studies, Psychophysiology of Perception, as well as Behavioural, Cognitive and Environmental Psychology, and introducing them into lighting design curricula. The course will be extended with rich and professionally produced open educational materials, and an online Virtual Lab platform aimed at accessibility and fostering implementation across Europe. In addition, the project will facilitate the learning mobility opportunities for both students and staff of participating universities through a series of summer schools.
The project is an example of innovative, multidisciplinary approach, combining topics of Lighting Design, Health, Wellbeing, Psychology, ICT, Architecture and Built Environment, and bringing together academic and non-academic partners from Europe, USA and Russia. It will help to prepare graduates for the lighting industry and other employers in Europe and around the world.
The kick-off meeting of the project will take place on 3rd October 2018 at the University of Wolverhampton. It will be followed by a project presentation event on the 4th October, which will be open to academics and business community. If you are interested in participating in the event on 4th October please contact PSOEvents@wlv.ac.uk by the 21 September 2018 deadline.
The partners involved in this project are:
- University of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom – Faculty of Arts; Faculty of Science and Engineering
- Aalborg University, Denmark - Lighting Design Research Group of the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology
- Hochschule Wismar, Germany - Faculty of Architecture and Design
- KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden - Department of Lighting Design at KTH School of Architecture and the Built Environment; Department of Media Technology and Interaction Design, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
- ITMO University, Russia - Creative Lighting Department at the School of Photonics
- Thomas Jefferson University, USA - School of Design and Engineering; Jefferson's Light Research Program at the College of Life Sciences.
Associated Partners:
- VIA-Verlag company, Germany
- Università Iuav di Venezia, Italy
- Vicenza Institute of Architecture, Italy
- Roma Tre University, Italy
- Tallinn University, Estonia - The School of Digital Technologies
