Optical Engineers to Receive SAE Award for Automotive Lighting Research

WARRENDALE, Pa., March 6, 2008 - Three optical engineers from North American Lighting in Farmington Hills, Mich., are recipients of SAE International's Colwell Merit Award. They will be honored during the SAE 2008 World Congress Award Ceremony held April 15, 5-7:30 p.m., at Cobo Center in Detroit.

The Colwell Merit Award, established in 1965, annually recognizes the authors of outstanding papers presented at an SAE conference or section meeting. The late Arch T. Colwell, who first funded this award, served SAE International in many capacities for nearly 50 years, including a term as President in 1941.

This award is funded through the SAE Foundation. In addition to supporting the awards, recognition and scholarship programs of SAE International, the SAE Foundation develops and funds programs and incentives that foster student interest in engineering, scientific and technical education.

The following authors will be recognized for co-authoring the paper, "LED Flux Measurement Methods for Automotive Lighting" (SAE paper #2006-01-0288). This paper provides the results of testing in which three different types of measurements for LED flux were compared.

Jie Chen
Chen is an optical engineer at North American Lighting, where he specializes in forward lighting and signal lighting. His main research interests are in optical design, light sources and photometry.

Chen holds a bachelor's in light sources and illuminating engineering from Fudan University in China, and a master's in lighting from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Amine Taleb-Bendiab
Taleb-Bendiab is manager of the Optical Design Group at North American Lighting. In this position, he manages the company's optical design activities for both forward lighting and signal lighting production programs, as well as new technology development projects.

A member of SAE International, Taleb-Bendiab has published several technical papers related to high-power LEDs in automotive lighting.

He holds a bachelor's in chemistry from Oran University in Algeria, and master's and doctorate degrees in physical chemistry from the University of Michigan. He resides in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Ben Wang
Wang is principal optical engineer at North American Lighting. His main research interest is vehicle headlamp design; he has been developing the design method of the LED headlamp for the last five years. Previously, he was a professor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in China.

Wang has published several SAE technical papers about optical designs in automotive forward lighting.

Wang received his bachelor's in physics from East China Normal University. He resides in Northville, Mich.

For more information on the award recipients, please contact Kishore Ahuja at North American Lighting, Kahuja@nal.com.

For more information on SAE International's Colwell Merit Award, please contact pr@sae.org.