Lately, the PolyChroma team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been selected as the winner by the 2011 Berkeley-Stanford Cleantech (BSC) Launchpad for cash, glory and the ear of the U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.

The theme of this year’s competition was “Creating Jobs for a Green Economy.” Marnix Hollander, Kurtis McKenne, Chunguang Charlotte Wang and Jon Garrity who came from MIT composed of the team and focused on a venture for developing optics for the next generation of LED lighting.

Their technology is described as breaking “critical barriers to mass adoption of LEDs for lighting,” such as long payback period and poor light quality, by tuning the color output to allow for “a 2yr payback period while delivering a high quality white light.”

They envision “20,000 museums that would love to be able to tune the color of their lights to complement their exhibits,” followed later by a general market penetration of LEDs to increase to 50-80% by 2020.

As the winners, the team will receive $10,000 in cash and services as well as a personal meeting with leading cleantech venture capital firms and the opportunity to pitch U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu.