Martin Schubert, a doctoral student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., has won the $30,000 Lemelson-Rensselaer Prize for his work on light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.

Schubert developed a new, polarized type of LED that could allow their widespread use as light sources for liquid-crystal displays in televisions, computers, cell phones and other devices.

Schubert first discovered that traditional LEDs actually produce polarized light, but existing LEDs did not capitalize on the light's polarization. Using that information, he devised an optics setup around the LED chip to enhance the polarization, creating the first polarized LED.

The invention could advance the effort to combine the power and environmental soundness of LEDs with the beauty and clarity of LCDs.

Schubert is the son of E. Fred Schubert, a lighting research expert and senior chair of the Rensselaer Future Chips Constellation. The younger Schubert received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Cornell University in electrical engineering and expected to pursue a career in computer chip development, but his father thought he had ideas and skills applicable to lighting research and recruited his son to join the lighting research effort at Rensselaer.