13th Annual Symposium on the Science and Technology of Lighting (LS13) is hosted by The Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute through Friday, June 29. As the commence part of this symposium, "CTO session: Forecasting the future of lighting technologies" has seen technology executives from Cree, GE Lighting, Osram, Panasonic, Philips and Toshiba discussing LED lighting.
 
Rob Glass, vice president of technology, materials, and optoelectronics at Cree, spoke first and stirred the crowd quipping "the last place to look for an accurate prediction of the future is to a panel of industry experts." His real point was that established companies often are centered on what works and makes money in the near term. He said that technologies that will really shape the future are ones that have yet to be invented.

Glass did address solid-state lighting (SSL) specifically with some notable comments. He reminded that there is significant opportunity across the value chain to improve SSL as opposed to gains being centered purely on the LED. Examples include driver electronics, optics, and other elements.