CSOn Tuesday, 15 November, we had the honour to attend a meeting on the topic of harmonisation of our internal time with the external environment, which was attended by the founder of chronobiology and former chairwoman, today emeritus scientist of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Professor Helena Illnerová. In the 1970s, she discovered the time synchronisation system, more precisely the circadian rhythms of organisms.
Although it was not the first time, meeting this amazing and very important woman in our field is always enriching for us. “Professor Illnerová drew us into the world of the human body and the ways in which it functions. During the discussion, she managed to really get everyone excited about the topic and ponder how our body works when perceiving light through our eyes and where we could potentially go in the future thanks to the scientific knowledge and new technologies,” comments Michal Vopat, R&D project manager from Spectrasol.
We already know that light has an effect on the temporal system, alertness, attention, performance and mood. Our lighting systems are also based on Professor Illnerová’s research and contribute to better physical and mental health. “I was very pleased that almost everything matched up with what we present to our customers. Basically everything that was said there is already shared with us by Hynek Medřický, Technical Director and lighting expert from our team. It is clear that Hynek will one day become one of the true successors of Professor Illnerová’s ideas,” says David Piller, senior project manager at Spectrasol.
The mention of an experiment with laboratory animals, in which a short exposure to cold light managed to shift the activity of their organs by up to two hours, made us realise again how powerful light is and encouraged us to continue our work in the development and application of our lighting systems.
