The Nuckolls Fund for Lighting Education presented one grant and two awards at its annual luncheon held during Lightfair. They were presented to the winners by Jeffrey A. Milham, Nuckolls Fund board president.
The fund, established in 1989 and named in honor of the late lighting designer and educator James L. Nuckolls, is one of only a few organizations that provides funding opportunities for students and educators focused on lighting subjects in North American academic programs. To date, the fund has given a total of $715,000, including the 2011 awards.
The $10,000 Edison Price Fellowship Grant was presented to Tina Sarawgi, associate professor and director of graduate studies, Department of Interior Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Sarwagi has developed e-light, a series of interactive teaching modules that illustrate the use of lighting design on software programs. She is currently an intern at Light Defines Form, a Greensboro, N.C., lighting design firm, where she will be testing the modules through the fall. She also plans to incorporate sustainable design elements into the modules.
The $5,000 Jonas Bellovin Scholar Achievement Award went to Leora Radetsky, a Ph.D. candidate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Center in Troy, N.Y. Radetsky's research explores light's impact on health, focusing on animals used in cancer research to understand the effects of circadian disruption on cancer and other diseases.
The $5,000 Jules Horton International Student Achievement Award was given to June Park, a second-year Master of Fine Art student at Parsons The New School for Design in New York. An economics major in South Korea, Park came to the United States to study interior design and is now pursuing a Master of Fine Art with a focus on architectural lighting design.
Additional information about the Fund's activities and application forms for the 2012 grants (due Feb. 3, 2012) can be found at the Fund's website, nuckollsfund.org.
