Per Lysaa

Per Lysaa is a Norwegian entrepreneur, inventor, architect and artist. His innovations combine Photobiology Research on plants, with controlled environment competence and process automation technologies. Per is the founder and CEO of the photobiology and controlled environment company Intravision Group AS (1998, Norway & Canada), and a co-founder of Elevate Farms Ltd. (2017, Canada) in cooperation with Amin Jadavji. In 2010 Per established a research partnership with Dr Mike Dixon and his Canadian space research group at the Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility (CESRF) at the University of Guelph. This lead to collaboration in a string of space exploration research projects including the development of unique plant research infrastructure, harsh environment deployment of plant based life support systems andresearch on a range of plants for medicinal and food applications.

Bio for Intravision Group.

Intravision Group (founded 1998) is a photobiology and controlled environment technology company developing (1) Technologies for Photobiology Research on Plants, and (2) Automated Controlled Environment Production Systems for medicinal and food-plants. From its startup focus within marine biotechnology and a light-tube based photobiology platform, Intravision gradually shifted to LEDs from 2003. In 2010, following a partnership with the Canadian space research institute CESRF at the University of Guelph – the commercial direction shifted towards medicinal- and food plants. The cooperation with CESRF led to a series of R&D projects devoted to human life support for manned space exploration, including the development of specific photobiology research tools for this niche. Intravision is today a supplier of R&D Photobiology tools towards both the space research programs in North America and towards the European Space Agency’s Melissa program. Intravision has in cooperation with CESRF invested into the co-development of photobiology research chambers, merging the controlled environment learnings from decades of space research with advanced photobiology and preparing this technology for further research into deep machine learning and AI.

The research objectives in Intravision projects are focused on photobiology research to understand the interactions between the spectral quality of light (ie. colour) and the light receptor mechanisms of plants. The ongoing collaboration with the CESRF has led to the invention of the GravityFlow system which integrates many of the lessons learned in environment control and plant-environment interactions. Originally intended for automated production of vaccines and biosimilar medicines, the system has since been optimized for plant production applications ranging from biotech to food-plants.