PNNL

Kate Hickcox is a research scientist whose work focuses on lighting sustainability. She joined Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in 2020 and has worked in lighting research and design since 2004. Her sustainability research in the Energy Technology Deployment group considers the complex aesthetic, technical, visual, and non-visual needs of people while equitably benefiting the economy, society, and the environment. Her work at PNNL includes supporting energy equity and justice in systems technologies, leading decarbonization and circularity efforts for lighting and other mechanical and electrical systems, and understanding effects of outdoor nighttime lighting.

She has published technical publications and reports and has presented at LightFair International, the International Association of Lighting Designers, LEDucation, the International Commission on Illumination, and the Illuminating Engineering Society. Topics include sustainability, life cycle assessment, subjective rating scales, designing for darkness, glare and brightness perception, acoustics, and lighting quality metrics.

Hickcox has been a guest critic and speaker at the Rhode Island School of Design, Parsons School of Design, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Architecture Department. She has taught at Parsons’ School of Constructed Environments.

• Energy efficiency and sustainability
• Energy equity and energy justice 
• Equitable use of lighting
• Health effects of light and light quality
• Lighting effects in outdoor nighttime environments

• MS in Lighting, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• BFA in Furniture, Rhode Island School of Design

• Member, Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), 2011–current
• Secretary, IES Discomfort Glare in Outdoor Nighttime Environments Committee, 2020–2023
• Treasurer, IES Maine Section, 2020–2023
• Member, IES Standards Committee, 2021–current

• IES Standards & Research Award, 2021
• IALD goes WILD Featured Project, Electric Garden Recording Studio, 2019
• Lighting Fellow for the Design Trust for Public Space, Opening the Edge, 2016
• Shemitz Scholarship Winner, the Lighting Quotient, 2011

2024

• Puig-Santana, E., K. Johnston, and K. S. Hickcox. 2024. “Guidance for Integrating Energy Justice and Equity in Building Technology Deployment Programs: Tracking, Reporting, and Maximizing the Flow of Benefits from Building System Technology Deployment Activities to Disadvantaged Communities and Target Sectors.” Pacific Northwest National Laboratory PNNL-35548. Richland, Washington. https://doi.org/10.2172/2305374.

2022

• Hickcox K. S., S. Fotios, B. K. Abboushi, and N. J. Miller. 2022. "Correspondence: A new two-step approach for evaluating discomfort from glare." Lighting Research & Technology 54, no. 1:91–92. PNNL-SA-167574. https://doi.org/10.1177/14771535211071133.
• Hickcox K.S. and A. Smith. 2022. "Strategies for achieving circular economy goals in the lighting industry through design for disassembly-based methodologies." In IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, The 8th International Light Symposium: Re-thinking Lighting Design in a Sustainable Future (Light Symposium 2022) September 21-23, 2022, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1099, Art. No. 012004. London: Institute of Physics. PNNL-SA-172377. https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/1099/1/012004.
• Hickcox, K. S., M. Myer, P. A. Torcellini, R. Langner, J. Shackelford, A. Robinson, and C. Regnier. 2022. “Challenges and Lessons Learned from an Analysis of Three Zero Energy Buildings.” In 2022 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings, August 2022.