Down with Fluorescents! Daylight Benefits Entire Office February 23, 2010

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2010/02/16/Light_Beyond_Vision

Mirjam Munch compares the quality of lighting conditions in offices using artificial lighting to those using redirected daylight. She shows how redirected daylight may help more naturally regulate the circadian rhythms of office dwellers.

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Natural light helps keep our bodies in tune with the external cycle of day and night, the so-called circadian system, and therefore with the world around us. For many, sunlight is a cue to wake, while darkness leads us toward sleep.

It is important, then, that the buildings we inhabit take full advantage of daylight -- both to keep human occupants comfortable and healthy, and also to optimize energy efficiency.

For the third event in the series on light, swissnex San Francisco brings Jean-Louis Scartezzini and Mirjam Münch, from the Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory at EPFL, to present their experiences with daylighting research and technology. Their work illustrates possible integration steps toward optimized "Day and Night" lighting environments with respect to energy consumption and human health.

Marilyne Andersen, associate professor in the Building Technology Program of MIT's Department of Architecture and head of the Daylighting Lab, also joins the discussion with an overview of her efforts to better integrate energy-efficiency and human-responsiveness to daylighting into architecture and design. - Swissnex San Francisco

Mirjam Münch joined the Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory at EPFL, in Switzerland, as a post-doctoral research fellow in 2009 to help bridge the fields of architecture and building science with those of chronobiology and circadian rhythms. She studies the effects of daylight on humans and searches for new ways to integrate this knowledge in applied settings help optimize light conditions in the workplace and at home.

She holds a bachelor's degree in biology from ETH Zurich, in Switzerland, and a master's degree from the University of Zurich. She studied neurobiology at the University of Basel, investigating the circadian and homeostatic effects of age and monochromatic light on human sleep, then moved to the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, where she was further trained in sleep research and chronobiology.