Alice Chun
Growing up in Seoul, Korea, Alice spent many days learning how a simple fold can become structure. Her mother taught her origami forms, and how to sew her own clothes. Always creative, fascinated by design, structure and forms, Alice received her Masters in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. With emerging trends in material technology yielding smarter, lighter, faster, sustainable fabrication, she started to sew solar panels to fabric as early experiments for harnessing solar energy with softer, malleable material. She became focused on solar technology and clean energy solutions upon learning her son Quinn was diagnosed with asthma. As a Professor in Architecture and Material Technology at Columbia University, Alice created early prototypes of solar lights with her students. Still not satisfied, and fueled by her passion for helping the underserved, she invented the world’s only self-inflatable, portable solar light—eliminating the need for a mouth nozzle, which ensured a healthy, sanitary method to inflate. Naming her invention the SolarPuff™, she conducted three years of field testing in Haiti, and in 2015 launched Solight Design and a KickStarter program with unprecedented results. She went on to win numerous awards, including the US Patent Award for Humanity, and her products have been exhibited at MOMA, the Modern Museum of Art in New York City, and in 2019 featured in Hillary Clinton’s “The Book of Gutsy Women”. solight-design.com seesu-95.com
