I'm officially hanging out my shingle as a lighting consultant. I've been involved in lighting and lighting research since 1977 and have been a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for 34 years. My specialty is the use of lighting controls in commercial buildings but I am also a generalist with broad knowledge across most things lighting. I am opinionated and generally left-wing but flatter myself that my opinions are more informed by facts than simple emotion. And I can have my mind changed by a well-framed argument. I am particularly interested in using lighting, especially LED lighting linked to lighting controls, for the betterment of people and the environment. I believe that lighting, properly applied, can make our lives more comfortable, safer and more fun.

Francis Rubinstein has been a Staff Scientist in the Building Technologies and Urban Systems Department at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. As senior lighting researcher in the Electronics, Lighting and Networks Group, he led the Lab’s research work on advanced lighting controls systems in commercial buildings. He has conducted monitored demonstrations of lighting control systems for over 30 years, including the new New York Times Building and multiple Federal buildings throughout the US. He has published widely on the subject of calibrating and commissioning daylight control systems. The sliding setpoint algorithm, which Rubinstein developed in the 1980s, has found its way into several commercial daylighting control systems. Previously, he managed a major demonstration of lighting controls at the San Francisco Federal Building for which he was awarded the Vice-Presidential National Performance Award (“Hammer” Award) in 1996. He spearheaded the successful effort to bring controllable lighting into California's 2013 Title 24 Non-Residential Building Standard. At the Berkeley Lab, he developed a low-cost building equipment control network (IBECS) that will allow lighting systems and other building equipment to be controlled wirelessly from the Internet.

As senior photometric test engineer, responsible for photometering the Prescolite product line. Measured the performance of sharp cutoff roadway luminaires (designed by John Brass); compared the performance of the wood prototype to the performance of a production luminaire. Wrote computer program to transform the luminaire candlepower reports into isolux diagrams for use by the field reps.