Dr. Rajaram Bhagavathula is a Senior Research Associate in the center for infrastructure-based safety systems (CIBSS) at Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. His research is focused on the human factors of the lighting. Specifically, he aims to understand the effects of lighting on road user health, safety, and behavior. His work has led to the development of lighting guidelines for streets and roadways using LED lighting technologies. Dr. Bhagavathula is also a member of the IES’s Roadway Lighting Committee, Vision Science Committee, and Discomfort Glare in Outdoor Nighttime Environments. Dr. Bhagavathula received a Ph.D. in Human Factors and Ergonomics from Virginia Tech.

Jill Cody is a principal with Dark Light Design, with offices in Seattle and St. Louis. Her 25 years of lighting design experience include a wide variety of project types, from highly detailed historic landmarks to urban-scale master plans. Her other work includes corporate, education, civic, hospitality, and site projects that have been recognized with numerous awards for design and sustainability. Jill is a member of the Illuminating Engineering Society and the International Association of Lighting Designers; she is a LEED Accredited Professional, Lighting Certified, and a Certified Lighting Designer. Her industry involvement includes past service in roles with the IES and IALD, and she currently serves on the Board of Directors of the IALD Education Trust.

In 1994 Anne founded Anne Kustner Lighting Design, Ltd. (AKLD). AKLD has successfully designed lighting and controls for more than 1,600 architectural lighting design and lighting controls projects in a wide range of applications and environments; locally, nationally, and internationally.

Anne combines her extraordinary people skills and is an effective communicator with an open and straight forward management style. She is a very effective and motivational leader with many years of professional lighting design experience, working in consulting engineering, electrical distribution, and as president of an independent award-winning lighting design firm. She infuses both her keen aesthetic sense and technical skill into each project AKLD is involved with. Anne has taught lighting design at the college level and lighting design courses for the IES and speaks around the country on lighting related topics.

Completed projects include corporate, hospitality, retail, municipal, healthcare facilities, houses of worship, libraries, schools, high-end residential, galleries, exterior facade and landmark lighting. A number of these projects are sustainably designed with LEED, Well Building or Living Building Challenge certifications.

From corporate offices to casinos, monuments to animal environments, Ron’s more than 30 years of experience in lighting includes creative solutions and innovative design for a diverse range of project sizes and types throughout the U.S. and abroad. He collaborates with design and ownership teams to create distinctive spaces that satisfy the project’s budgetary needs and visual goals, both functionally and aesthetically.

A Pennsylvania State University graduate in architectural engineering, Ron brings expertise to each project not only in lighting design, but also in consideration of sustainability and the environment. His design experience includes work with both large and small project teams, and he always seeks to enhance the visual experiences, consciously and subconsciously, of those who interact with the architecture.

Charles joined Fisher Marantz Stone in 1983 and became President in 2003. The firm’s New York and Seattle studios have received over 200 awards and successfully completed over 5000 projects on five continents. Charles’s “Traveling Light” lecture tour features ten explorations of light and culture and has visited universities and conferences in 22 nations; continuing virtually in 2020 with Podcasts and live Conferences “in” Dubai, Palm Springs, and Buenos Aires. He is a Fellow and Past President of the International Association of Lighting Designers. In addition to annual teaching and recruiting visits to universities worldwide, Charles is active in education as a member of Project Candle at Penn State University, and the Advisory Board for the incipient Architectural Lighting program at Oregon State University. He repeatedly asks his young staff, “what do we make here?…. the answer: “Magic”.