Fluorescent Fridays: From Plant to Pattern: Exploring Natural Fashion Colors with Almonds and Indigo (16 Oct 2026)

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:00:00 GMT

WHO	University students and faculty
WHEN	Friday, October 16, 12-1pm EST

From Plant to Pattern: Exploring Natural Fashion Colors with Almonds and Indigo

Speakers: Dr. Jiangning Che and students from the Department of Apparel Merchandising & Management, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Projects to be presented:

Project 1: Almond Waste for Textile Coloration: This study investigated the use of almond byproducts as an agricultural waste resource for innovative and sustainable textile coloration. Overall, the findings highlight the potential of almond byproducts as an innovative, eco-friendly natural dye source that supports agricultural waste valorization while providing functional performance for sustainable textile applications.

Project 2: From Plant to Pattern: Exploring the Indigo Dyeing and Fashion Design Process: The micro-internship project explores the complete “plant-to-pattern” lifecycle of indigo, emphasizing environmental sustainability, craftsmanship, and experiential learning. The initiative demonstrates how natural dyeing can bridge agriculture, design, and manufacturing while fostering creativity, technical skills, and environmental stewardship within contemporary apparel and textile practices.

Students from the Department of Apparel Merchandising & Management, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

FLUORESCENT FRIDAYS is a platform for university students from all disciplines to network with color professionals and fellow students, and to explore cutting-edge information about color’s role in our lives and applications in the world.

Global Student Chapter: The long range goal is to build a global student chapter that positions color as a multidimensional STEAM model (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math), sharing up-to-date color research by scientists, artists, designers, industry professionals, and university students.21st century color communication requires a commitment to building bridges for sharing resources, cultivating mentors, and creating new opportunities. With up-to-date information and useful tools, students become the next generation of leaders in ever-evolving color related disciplines.

Cutting Edge Lectures - Ren Ng presents: A tale of three novel colors (17 Nov 2026)

Tue, 17 Nov 2026 19:00:00 GMT

A tale of three novel colors: olo, keef and litz

This talk will be about research into novel human color perception. We showed human subjects a novel color, olo, by individually stimulating thousands of cells on the retina with laser microdoses, using a system we call Oz Vision. Olo corresponds to targeting only M cone cells and not L or S cones, which never happens in natural vision. Olo appears blue-green of unprecedented saturation. In theory, there are other novel colors that could not be as easily described. This talk will present the mathematical theory of two such tetrachromatic colors, keef and litz, and work towards prototyping them in the real world.

Ren Ng is a professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests are in imaging, graphics, human and computer vision. Research contributions include the novel color olo produced by the Oz Vision system, and the volumetric scene inference method NeRF. Before Berkeley, Ren was founder and CEO of Lytro, Inc., which commercialized his Ph.D. research on light field cameras. Ren completed his Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University, and received the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award. Ren has received the Jim and Donna Gray Faculty Award for Undergraduate Teaching, Sloan Research Fellowship, IS&T Image Engineering Innovation Award, R.I.T.'s Imaging Hall of Fame, the Selwyn Award from the Royal Photographic Society, MIT Tech Review's TR35 and Entrepreneur of the Year, Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business, and is a Kavli Fellow and Optica Fellow.

Color Council upcoming events

Fluorescent Fridays: From Plant to Pattern: Exploring Natural Fashion Colors with Almonds and Indigo (16 Oct 2026)

Cutting Edge Lectures - Ren Ng presents: A tale of three novel colors (17 Nov 2026)