From LEDs to Leaves, Discovering How Light Drives Life and Sustainability on Planet Earth

For the last few years I’ve been looking at the intersection of digital communications, neurobiology, and the lighting industry. In this talk I'll share a few of the things I've learned along the way about how light affects our bodies, our environment, and how LEDs and digital control are changing how we light our world.

Plants might look like the quiet wallflowers of the natural world, but don’t be fooled. Even without eyes, they can “see” sunlight and use it to decide when to grow, flower, or outcompete their neighbors. Inside every leaf, tiny molecular light sensors spring into action the moment sunlight hits, flipping genetic switches that shape how a plant lives its life. In this talk, we’ll peek inside plant cells to discover how plants listen to the sun and turn light into biological decisions.

At first glance, duckweeds are not more than tiny green dots floating on a pond that spread really fast, so fast that they can cover the entire water surface. But these plants hide fascinating about plant evolution and genome reshaping. Studying them can help us to understand how plants grow and reproduce, and may even help to develop sustainable ways to produce food and feed a growing world.