Harald Haas

Engineer, Entrepreneur, Inventor

Professor Haas is a technology innovator and an internationally recognized expert in the field of mobile and visible light communications. EMPLOYMENT HISTORY 08/10 – to date Professor of Mobile Communications, School of Engineering / Institute of Digital Communications (IDCOM), University of Edinburgh. 01/12 – to date Chief Technical Officer (CTO) (part time) for and Director of pureVLC Ltd - http://purevlc.com/ 08/08 – 07/10: Reader, School of Engineering / Institute of Digital Communications (IDCOM), University of Edinburgh. 06/07 – 07/08: Lecturer, School of Engineering / Institute of Digital Communications (IDCOM), University of Edinburgh. 09/02 – 11/12: Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, School of Engineering and Science, Jacobs University Bremen (holding an Honorary Contract between 06/07-11/12) 02/01 – 08/02: Research Project Manager, Siemens AG / Information & Communication Mobile Networks, Munich (Germany) 05/99 – 01/01: Research Associate, Department of Electronics & Electrical Engineering, University of Edinburgh 08/95 – 10/97: Application Engineer, Siemens AG / Semiconductor Division (now Infineon), Munich (Germany) 02/95 – 07/95: System Engineer (Heinz-Nixdorf scholar), Siemens AG, Bombay (India) MAJOR RESEARCH IMPACT - More than 200 refereed publications (50 Journal articles – including a Science paper which has been cited 243 times (Web of Science, 01.05.2012), and 6 invited journal papers; 151 international conference papers including three best paper awards) - TED video “Wireless data from every light bulb†has been watched more than 1,000,000 times (15 May 2012) - 1 book with Cambridge University Press - 4 invited book chapters (Wiley & Sons / Econ Verlag / InTech) - 23 awarded patents (and more than 20 pending patent applications) - Spun out a company, pureVLC Ltd., raised £250,000 seed funding within the first two month after launch, Jan. ‘12 RESEARCH GRANTS AND CONTRACTS - £6,344,000 total, in research grants as Investigator (Principal Investigator & Co-Investigator) - £3,228,000 in research grants as Principal Investigator NETWORKING - Chair of 2nd and co-chair of 3rd Optical Wireless Communications Workshop at IEEE Globecom 2011 and 2012 - Co-Organiser of Workshop on Photonic Communications, September 2011, Oxford - Guest Editor; EURASIP Journal on Wireless Commun. and Networking, Special Issue on Visible Light Communication INVITED PRESENTATIONS - Invited speaker at TED Global 2011, Edinburgh, 11 July – 15 July 2011 TECHNICAL ADVISOR AND AWARDS - Shortlisted for World Technology Award, New York, 2011 – now, Fellow of the World Technology Network (WTN) - Invited by NTT DOCOMO to serve on the DOCOMO Euro Labs Advisory Board in 2009, 2010 and 2011 - Appointed as Regular High Level Visiting Scientist by Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, 2007, renewed 2012 PUBLIC INTEREST (selected list) - TIME MAGAZINE (The 50 Best Inventions of the Year), 28 November 2011, “The Next WI-FI†- The New York Times, “Using Light to Send Data Across the Roomâ€, 18 July 2011, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/using-light-to-send-data-across-the-room/ - BBC World Service Radio Interview as part of their “Click†program on Visible Light Communications - Wired UK, 31 January 2012, “Meet Li-Fi, the LED-based alternative to household Wi-Fiâ€, http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/02/features/the-lightbulb-moment?page=all - The Economist, 28 January 2012, “Tripping the light fantastic – A fast and cheap optical version of Wi-Fi is coming†http://www.economist.com/node/21543470 - New Scientist, 28 July 2011, “Will Li-Fi be the new Wi-Fi?†http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128225.400-will-lifi-be-the-new-wifi.html - The Guardian / The Observer, “My bright idea: Light bulbs can be used to transmit dataâ€, 7 November 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/nov/07/bright-idea-light-bulbs-data - Huffington Post, December 2011, “Best of TED 2011 – 18 Groundbreaking Ideasâ€, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/tedtalks2011/ - British Council (‘Cubed’), “Transmitting Data with Light†http://www.britishcouncil.org/science-cubed-transmitting-data.htm UNIVERSITY EDUCATION AND DEGREES AWARDED - Ph.D. Interference analysis of and dynamic channel assignment algorithms in TD–CDMA/TDD systems, University of Edinburgh, viva date: December 2000 - Dipl.-Ing. Comparison of conventional controller with fuzzy controller, Geor

- Communications Technology - Philosophy - Nature

We enable light bulbs to be turned into high-speed communications devices. It is possible to modulate non-coherent light generated by white LED based lamps in order to carry large amounts of information without interfering with the intended function of illumination. Applications for the technology can cover a wide of areas: - Domestic: e.g. Home automation, Internet access. - Transport: Communications via street lighting, traffic lights, aircraft passenger lighting, aircraft navigation lights with identification transmission, car head/tail lamp communications. - Hospitals: Equipment and staff communications with no RFI problems. - Industrial: Industrial and office lighting with inbuilt communications and localisation, intrinsically safe communications -- e.g. in areas with flammable materials. - Public sector: providing local information -- e.g. localised information transmission in museums, communications for civil contingencies. - Homeland security and defense.

Mobile Communications Technology, Visible Light Communication

Harald Haas is the pioneer behind a new type of light bulb that can communicate as well as illuminate – access the Internet using light instead of radio waves. Imagine using your car headlights to transmit data ... or surfing the web safely on a plane, tethered only by a line of sight. Harald Haas is working on it. A professor of engineering at Edinburgh University, Haas has long been studying ways to communicate electronic data signals, designing modulation techniques that pack more data onto existing networks. But his latest work leaps beyond wires and radio waves to transmit data via an LED bulb that glows and darkens faster than the human eye can see. It should be so cheap that it’s everywhere. Using the visible light spectrum, which comes for free, you can piggy-back existing wireless services on the back of lighting equipment.