Tuesday 30 January, NWO announced that they will finance six application-oriented projects via their Open Technology Program. NWO is contributing over 4.3 million euros to these application-oriented technical-scientific projects. Industry and other organizations add almost 400 thousand euros to this. One of these projects is Advanced Freeform Optics for Reducing Glare and Light Pollution submitted by Martijn Anthonissen, Wilbert IJzerman and Jan ten Thije Boonkkamp.

Modern LED-based (outdoor) lighting has two major issues: glare (harsh uncomfortably bright light) and light pollution (unwanted, inappropriate, or excessive artificial lighting). To reduce glare, the usage of diffusers and lens arrays is state of the art. This results in uncontrolled light distributions that increase light pollution. In this project we try to find the design methodology for new optical components that do not have this drawback and still allow a good control of the light distribution.

Here is the link to NWO’s press release:

https://www.nwo.nl/en/news/six-application-oriented-projects-will-start-via-nwos-open-technology-programme

This is from TU/e’s website:

https://www.tue.nl/en/news-and-events/news-overview/30-01-2024-one-and-a-half-million-euros-for-tue-research-on-light-pollution-and-plastic-waste-separation