EnterpriseWorks Graduate Eden Park Illumination Featured in Wall Street Journal After Pivoting Technology to Address COVID-19

Category : EnterpriseWorks
Posted on: August 3, 2020

Eden Park Illumination, a faculty-founded startup that launched at the  EnterpriseWorks incubator at Research Park, drew the attention of the Wall Street Journal for pivoting its UV light technology to address COVID-19. In the process, it has rejuvenated the company and has experienced unprecedented growth.

Wall Street Journal reporter Ruth Simon profiled the company in her recent story, “Covid-19 Shuttered More Than 1 Million Small Businesses. Here Is How Five Survived.”

Wrote Simon, in the Journal’s August 1 editions: “Eden Park Illumination Inc. had one product to sell before Covid-19: an ultraviolet light that distinguished real diamonds from fakes. The spread of a deadly virus across the globe shifted the focus of the tiny Champaign, Ill., startup to another ultraviolet light application that it had not planned to introduce for at least two years. This one would disinfect crowded spaces. Within weeks, the 10-person company began shipping prototypes. Eden Park has since delivered more than 1,000 of the lights and added a dozen workers, including a head of manufacturing.”

Eden Park Illumination was founded by Gary Eden and Sun-Jin Park, then University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign electrical engineering faculty members (Eden is now an emeritus faculty member). It graduated from EnterpriseWorks in 2009.

Eden and Park remain part of the company; it recently hired a new CEO, John Yerger.

Now based on the west side of Champaign, the company manufactures flat panel, thin 222 nm UV lamps that “may provide immediate relief in mitigating COVID-19 outbreaks in populated indoor spaces, including factories, submarines, aircraft carriers, planes, waiting rooms, restaurants and more.”

The company has also been profiled on Fox Business News with other mentions on ABC News and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 

For more about the company and its technology, visit the Eden Park website.

EnterpriseWorks Graduate Eden Park Illumination Featured in Wall Street Journal After Pivoting Technology to Address COVID-19 4 EnterpriseWorks Graduate Eden Park Illumination Featured in Wall Street Journal After Pivoting Technology to Address COVID-19