Lutron Lighting Innovation Competition

Have fun and make the light shine with your imagination!

Key Dates 2026:

Kickoff Event: Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, 5:30-7 pm, SILab

Workshop: Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, 4 pm, SILab

Polish Day: Friday, Feb. 20, 2026, 12-6 pm, SILab

Competition and Prizes: Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026, 1-3 pm, SILab

You can participate or watch!

Sign Up Information:

Sign up for the Kickoff on Handshake

Sign up your team and enter the competition

Supply order form

Final Project Submission (only 1 member of your team needs to submit the project)

Competition Guidelines:

Entrants will form teams of one to four, at least one must be a College of Engineering student. Each team must design and construct their coolest, most innovative lighting design project. Projects will be judged on: Creativity and Originality, Engineering Sophistication, and Aesthetic Appeal. Any combination of mechanical, electrical and computer engineering will prove useful toward these categories. Projects may (but need not) include complex mechanical design, circuitry, or microcontroller programming to produce a final project of these qualities. Requirements for amount of light produced, application of product, or overall purpose are intentionally left ambiguous to allow for a wide spectrum of resulting projects.

Each team will have a budget of $50 when the order is placed through SILab and the order request form. Unused supplies will be returned to SILab. Each team will need to request an order for what they need for their project and must decide on one person who will place the order requests for your team. You should look at Amazon for your parts. Any questions, please contact silab@bu.edu. Good Luck!

Lutron Electronics, the College of Engineering Office of Career Development, and SILab will sponsor this event imagined by former SILab Advisor, Noah Abbott, who now works at Lutron.

Competition Prizes:

  • 1st Place – $300
  • 2nd Place – $150
  • 3rd Place – $75

Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2025 Competition!

3 of the students with their project, a physical minecraft lamp and piston controlled by a light up torch the umbrella team demonstrating the heat opening by aiming a heat gun at the tip of the umbrella 2 students pointing at their neuron shaped project that lights up based on sound input wide group shot showing the 2 students showing off their dragon shaped proejctor to the lutron judges while more competition activity happens behind them team behind the light up sound bar with their project and best first year winner certificate 4 students who made the birthday cake project 2 students showing off their diorama to the camera 2 of the students on the team and their project, a motion sensor walking boot cover that lights up red when the injured foot touches the ground student demonstrates his muscle reactive lights by flexing his arm to turn on an LED student showing off black box, which when opened shows a UV phone sterilizer student pointing out details of light up windmill project to lutron judges crowd shot showing multiple groups presenting their projects to judges, CDO staff, and fellow students

See Photos from Past Lutron Competitions:

2025 – Minecraft Redstone
2024 – Color of Music
2023 – Write-A-Light
2022 – Jellyfish Lamp
2020 – Inside Out

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