I went to visit a friend, Cameron Sinclair, who’s doing great work through his organization, Architecture for Humanity. One person he mentioned in our conversation was Sheila Kennedy and her project Portable Light. From the website:

“Portable Light is an interdisciplinary research, design and engineering project to create and implement new models for energy efficient electrical power and lighting. Portable Light applies creative processes and strategic integrative thinking to optimize existing semi-conductor technologies and create new applications to serve the large number of people—more than 2 billion—who do not have access to electric light or power. Portable Light is based upon the principle that global needs for technology development are inevitably interconnected. Knowledge, techniques, market solutions and data produced by the project benefit the “third” world and the “first” world where the need to imagine, design and develop energy efficient alternatives to the centralized and increasingly costly electrical grid is becoming ever more important.”

We’ll be keeping a close eye on LEDs, HBLEDs and OLEDs. Lots of design bandwidth in these lighting technologies.