Emily Brooke MBE, Product Design graduate is developing an air quality device to alert cyclists to polluted areas as they ride.
The device is one of a number of innovations being researched by Emily, Founder and Chairwoman of a technology company Beryl.
Last week Emily received an Honorary Doctor of Engineering from the University in recognition of her major contribution to product design and the promotion of entrepreneurship.
Professor Andrew Lloyd, the University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Academic Operations, said Emily’s ground-breaking Laserlight that projects a green laser image onto the road ahead was “hugely increasing the visibility and safety of cyclists”. He said Laserlight, Emily’s final year Product Design project before graduating at the University, is attracting multi-million pound investment and is now on bike-share schemes in towns and cities including London, New York and Montreal.
“Now Emily and her team are working on a range of further innovations including a way of giving cyclists air quality monitoring data as they ride.”
Emily said: “Brighton has had a really important part of my heart for a long time.”
She told how 10 years ago she was biking towards the city’s seafront thinking of ways to make cyclists more visible: “I remember thinking, there’s a white van just in front of me and if he suddenly turned I would be squished, and wishing I had a virtual me travelling ahead of me to warn him I was coming.”
That was the first time Emily thought of Laserlight: “From that moment, the University really supported me. I got legal advice through beepurple (the University’s entrepreneurship support service) on how to file my very first patent, and through the University’s relationship with Santander I got to America on an entrepreneurial scholarship.
Emily added: “I want to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to the University and to beepurple and to the Vice-Chancellor (Professor Debra Humphris) for continuing to support me over what has been a busy few years/”
Find out more about BSc(Hons) Product Design with Professional Experience
And Product Design with Foundation Year
