​Our Motivation



“Solid-state lighting is where the internet was in the 1980’s.

We cannot foresee all that light and lighting will become

in the next decades, but know simply that it will be

wondrous and beautiful.”


Dr. Roland Haitz

Creator of Haitz's Law
QuarkStar Team Member
Godfather of Solid-State Lighting
[For more, please see Haitz's-Law.com]

​Partnering Light with Space

​The LED is the first major lighting technology revolution in the better part of a century that has required major global infrastructural change.

It will probably be the very last revolution as well! 

This is because the technology’s efficiencies are so high and its potential applications so vast, it will be difficult to justify additional global infrastructural changes for an alternative technology. And because this is the last major shift in lighting and infrastructure, the next decade offers unprecedented opportunity.

​The Team

Chief Executive Officer
Chief Technology Officer
Chief Operations Officer
Chief Financial Officer 
Chief Creative Catalyst
Dr. Louis Lerman
Dr. Eric Bretschneider
Jacqueline Teng
​Sara Gee
Dr. T
Anticipating this transformation and its resulting opportunities, QuarkStar was founded with some of the best-known pioneers of solid-state lighting.  This includes such luminaire luminaries as Roland Haitz [Haitz’s Law]; Bob Steele, founder of Strategies in Light; and Peter Stormberg, the former CTO of Philips Lighting.

And many more...

​QuarkStar: A World-Class Innovation Team

​Inventors on QuarkStar's early patents include pioneers and senior figures in the solid-state lighting community
  • Pioneer of LED technology and creator of Haitz's Law  (Moore’s Law for LEDS)
  • Developers of the first tunable LED light source
  • Inventor of the optics of the optical mouse
  • Project manager for first LEDs in automotive industry
  • Former CTO of Philips Lighting
  • Chair of the IES Solid-State Lighting subcommittee
  • Founder of largest global conference dedicated to LEDs & lighting, and SSL’s pioneering market analyst
  • Designer of the first double gold LEED building in North America
​Prior to QuarkStar – as technologists, engineers, market analysts, and industry prophets – they personally led the technology’s earliest developments into the marketplace and helped usher in the era of solid-state lighting and its many new applications. 
​And in conjunction with these early pioneers were a number of equally talented younger folk from a diverse set of backgrounds and technical specialties. Some were up-and-coming leaders of the solid-state movement having begun to make early contributions of their own, while others came from fields such as aerospace and AI robotics. And some were recent graduates just coming out into the job market. (Also see DEI section below.)
QuarkStar’s longstanding approach has been to combine QuarkStar’s senior pioneers and SSL veterans with promising younger folk as part of working innovation teams. Catalyzing each other as team members this combination of experience, foresight, and fresh thinking from outside the field allowed them to predict not just the LED’s applications and trends –  but to envision radically new technologies that take optimal advantage of LEDs.

​The Approach

​The Result

​This dream team of young and old, experienced pioneers and enthusiastic up and comers created an ecosystem of technologies that offers unprecedented control of light along with a unique scalability and modularity. Instead of merely adapting existing lighting technologies to the LED, these deep insights have led to an entirely new technology framework that more fully realizes the LED’s technological potential and economic advantages.

Through enhanced performance, simplified manufacturing, and reduced costs of operation this combination delivers major competitive advantage – even over other LED lighting devices using new LEDs but with the traditional optics of the field.

Interestingly, QuarkStar's integrated system of solid-state lighting has these advantages because it uses scalable building-block technologies congruent to those of the integrated circuit of that other semiconductor – the transistor. 

Innovation
​These technologies are so novel, individually and collectively, that they are protected by a global patent portfolio of over 500 applications, half of which are already granted. This portfolio has been built with the goal of providing our partners with protected technologies capable of dominating this last global lighting infrastructural shift. Learn more ›
Reflecting sustained minority participation at the highest levels of professional accomplishment & innovation: 

60% of QuarkStar’s 288 issued patents to date have QuarkStar inventors who are STEM minority members.

Some of QuarkStar’s most important innovations have come from our STEM minority team members, including the Edge-X optical technologies that are highlighted throughout this website.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
​External IP Counsel
Longest history and experience in lighting – having patented Thomas Edison’s bulbs