PhD defense Myrta Gkaintatzi-Masouti
11 December 2025, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Myrta focused in her thesis on advancing lighting simulation for occupant well-being by reviewing current methods, developing a new tool, and examining the importance of viewing behavior for eye-level light conditions. Myrta’s PhD project was part of the European LIGHTCAP project.
BL-group: Marielle Aarts and Juliette van Duijnhoven supervised Myrta during her PhD project. during her project. Ingrid Heynderickx was first promotor of Myrta.
MSc graduation Meijke Bochem
27 November 2025, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Meijke’s thesis describes the creation of a building design that positively influences the mental health of its visitors, thereby improving the societal resilience of Dutch society. Meijke completed the double track program of AUDE and BPS.
BL-group: Marielle Aarts and Juliette van Duijnhoven supervised Meijke during her project. Furthermore, John Swagten and Tom Veeger were her main supervisors for the architecture part. Deniz Tuzcuoğlu joined the supervision team for the discrete choice experiment.
GLOW 2025
8-15 November 2025, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
GLOW is an annual light festival that has illuminated Eindhoven since 2006. This year marks its 20th anniversary. For one week, the city showcases light art created by a wide range of artists, including TU/e students.
Between 2017 and 2019, the TU/e student team IGNITE developed Hypar – a modular light installation standing over five meters tall. Hypar has appeared in various forms at GLOW editions in 2018, 2019, and 2021, as well as at other international festivals. This year, Hypar made its return to GLOW! The installation received attention in media; for example in the NOS Jeugdjournaal.
Sietse de Vries was part of this student team and was proud to have Hypar back at this year’s GLOW festival.
BL-group alumni event 2025
2 October 2025, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
The third BL-group alumni event took place at the Eindhoven University of Technology, at the 6th floor of the Vertigo building (where the unit BPS is housed and hence where all alumni worked on their MSc, PhD, or EngD projects). The event consisted of networking drinks, inspiring pitches from all attendees and dinner.
Velux Academic Forum and Daylight Symposium
17-18 September 2025, Copenhagen, Denmark
At the Velux Academic Forum, 12 PhD candidates worldwide presented their work which resulted in interesting and critical discussions. The focus was on the aims and methods of research, not the results itself.
The 10th Velux Daylight Symposium included talks related to Design for well-being, Future directions for daylight requirements, Contact to outdoors and visual delight, Tools and methods informing daylighting design, and Science and architecture.
BL-group: Sietse de Vries and Maud van den Boomen presented their work at the Velux Academic Forum. Juliëtte van Duijnhoven was mentor at the Velux Academic Forum and moderator at the Velux Daylight Symposium.
CIE midterm meeting Vienna
7-9 July 2025, Vienna, Austria
Sietse de Vries presented a poster at the CIE midterm meeting in Vienna. The work, co-authored by John Mardaljevic and Juliëtte van Duijnhoven, has also been published as a paper in the conference proceedings entitled Characterising inter-individual variability in simulated personal light exposure: Impact of body morphology on light-dosimetry. Furthermore, Juliëtte van Duijnhoven also contributed to the JTC 18 and JTC 20 technical meetings.
BL-group: Sietse de Vries and Juliëtte van Duijnhoven attended the CIE conference.
Article in national newspaper
11 June 2025, The Netherlands
Juliëtte van Duijnhoven was interviewed for the national newspaper, the Volkskrant, regarding the importance of daylight for human health and well-being. Read the article (in Dutch) here!
Presentation at Healthy Buildings
10 June 2025, Reykjavik, Iceland
PhD student Maud van den Boomen presented her conference paper “An exploratory field study to identify the potential impact of working in daylight-deprived spaces in hospitals” at the Healthy Buildings conference in Iceland. Maud was provided the opportunity to attend this conference through the ISIAQ student award.
BL-group: Maud van den Boomen, Mariëlle Aarts and Juliëtte van Duijnhoven are authors of this conference paper.
Light in motion – paper alert!
16 May 2025, Online
Our recent paper (first-authored by Özge Karaman-Madan), just published in Building and Environment, reveals that dynamic sunlight patterns—like tree shadows dancing in the breeze—can significantly reduce physiological stress during high-pressure tasks in office settings. We found that these moving light effects not only calmed the body but also enhanced feelings of positive affect and engagement.
BL-group: Mariëlle Aarts and Juliëtte van Duijnhoven are co-authors of this work.
Light for Public Health initiative
16 May 2025, Online
On the UNESCO International day of light, the Light for Public Health initiative – a global effort to translate scientific knowledge about the non-visual effects of light into meaningful real-world impact – was launched. Grounded in 26 consensus statements, the initiative is designed to support public health authorities, practitioners, and communicators in applying the science of light exposure to improve health outcomes. The illustration on the left by Dr Olivia Walch is licensed under the CC-BY License.
A preprint was just published regarding this initiative.
BL-group: Juliëtte van Duijnhoven is part of the Ladenburg Light and Health Consortium.
National BREEAM congress
27 March 2025, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
At the National BREEAM Congress, Juliëtte shared knowledge on the effects of light on humans, ranging from vision to beyond vision. The day was filled with interesting talks on various topics, including the effects of nature on human wellbeing , wastewater reuse, and the role of biobased materials in the built environment. Explore the day’s review on the DGBC website.
BL-group: Juliëtte van Duijnhoven gave a presentation on light effects on human.
Wellbeing week at TU Eindhoven
17-20 March 2025, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
The Wellbeing Week focuses on mental, physical, and social wellbeing. The program consisted of sports lessons, coaching sessions, and workshops. One of the workshops was the ‘the power of daylight’ workshop.
In the workshop a tool was showcased to support students and staff to improve the daylight conditions at their home study/work place. This tool (the DaylightGuide) was developed by Verena de Kok as part of her EngD project in collaboration with Jens Christoffersen (VELUX).
BL-group: Juliëtte van Duijnhoven gave the ‘power of daylight’ workshop.
PhD defense Marzieh Nazari
5 March 2025, Trondheim, Norway
Marzieh Nazari defended her doctoral thesis “Architectural Daylighting through Simulation and Digital Visualisation” at the Department of Architecture and Technology, at NTNU.
BL-group: Mariëlle Aarts was external assessor of her PhD thesis.
Publication on characteristics of dosimeters
4 March 2025, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Wearable light loggers are increasingly available (see graph that shows devices with varying wearing positions). This paper describes a survey design to systematically outline 53 wearable light loggers, focusing on their key characteristics and usability. Want to know more? Have a look here!
Have a look at the overview of our journal papers and conference articles at well!
BL-group: Juliëtte van Duijnhoven is first author of this paper.
Contribution at IEEE LS19 conference
18 February 2025, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
RADYNVR, a Radiance Tool for Simulating Dynamic Natural Lighting for VR Applications. Immersive virtual reality is used to conduct studies on the perception of dynamic luminous patterns of natural light. We present RADYNVR (Radiance Dynamic Virtual Reality), a simulation tool that offers an accurate and straightforward method to create virtual environments with dynamic natural lighting. Key features of the tool are the ability to create shadow patterns of leaves swaying in the wind, and the efficient and accurate simulation of two characteristics of sunlight, solar penumbras and pinhole projections.
Want to know more? Have a look here!
BL-group: Sietse de Vries and Mariëlle Aarts authored this conference paper.
Maud started her PhD project
3 February 2025, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
One month ago, Maud van den Boomen started working as a PhD Candidate in the Building Lighting Group. She will work on sensor-based simulations for user adaptive lighting systems.
BL-group: Mariëlle Aarts and Juliëtte van Duijnhoven are supervisors of Maud.
Julian Kroese graduated from Building Lighting group
30 January 2025, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Today, Julian Kroese successfully completed his master graduation project in the Building Lighting group at TU/e. His research focused on investigating lighting conditions in the educational environment (at the Eindhoven University of Technology) and he developed an innovative tool to effectively communicate his findings to both students and timetable coordinators.
We are excited to share the insights and the tool with you all soon. Stay tuned!
BL-group: Juliëtte van Duijnhoven and Mariëlle Aarts were the supervision team. Helianthe Kort chaired the graduation committee.
Contribution at IEEE LS19 conference
12-14 November 2024, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
ILI organized, together with IEEE, the IEEE Sustainable Smart Lighting World Conference 2024. Approximately 120 light researchers from around the world attended the conference. Picture taken by Georges Zissis (chair of the International Scientific Committee of LS19).
View the posters presented by the BL group here:
– Advancing Quantification Methods for Personal Light Exposure Patterns
– Welcome to the future of lifelong learning lighting
BL-group: John Mardaljevic gave a keynote talk entitled ‘Daylight: Capricious Illumination’. Mariëlle Aarts presented the BOOST project on Lifelong Learning Lighting through a presentation and a poster. Sietse de Vries presented his current PhD project through a poster and his previous EngD project through an oral presentation. Ruby van Rijswijk, who completed her graduation project of the CME master co-supervised by Juliëtte van Duijnhoven, presented her work through an oral presentation.
Dutch Daylight student award
5 November 2024, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
The Dutch Daylight Award already existed as an award for realized architectural projects, and as of 2023 the Dutch Daylight Student Award was introduced. MSc and PhD students registered at Dutch higher education working on “something with daylight” were invited to show and share their research or design, to inspire others and have impact on the lighting profession. Floortje Arnts won the Dutch Daylight Student Award 2024 (Design) with her thesis entitled Enlightening Dementia.
More information about Floortje’s work.
BL-group: Floortje Arnts completed her master thesis in the Building Lighting group as well as in the AUDE unit. Within the BL-group, Mariëlle Aarts was her supervisor.
ISIAQ.nl student award
30 October 2024, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Maud van den Boomen won the ISIAQ.nl student award! This provides her the opportunity to attend the Healthy Buildings Europe 2025 conference in Reykjavik. Her research focused on the lighting conditions in hospital rooms that lack daylight and views, and particularly the health effect of these lighting conditions on the people who work in these environments. More information about the ISIAQ student award.
BL-group: Maud van den Boomen completed her master thesis in the Building Lighting group. Mariëlle Aarts and Juliëtte van Duijnhoven were her supervisors.
BL-group alumni event 2024
24 October 2024, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
The second BL-group alumni event took place at the Eindhoven University of Technology, at the 6th floor of the Vertigo building (where the unit BPS is housed and hence where all alumni worked on their MSc, PhD, or EngD projects). The event consisted of networking drinks, a pub quiz and dinner.
EngD diploma ceremony
8 October 2024, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
The SBC Graduation Ceremony was held, chaired by Prof.dr.ir. Astrid Kemperman. Four trainees from the TU/e EngD Smart Buildings and Cities program received their EngD diplomas: Fred Mudge, Amir H Babakhani, Sonja Adamovic, and Verena de Kok.
BL-group: EngD trainee Verena de Kok received her EngD diploma. Juliëtte van Duijnhoven was her academic supervisor.
De Avond van de Wetenschap & Maatschappij
7 October 2024, Leiden, The Netherlands
During the Avond van de Wetenschap & Maatschappij, Mariëlle Aarts discussed the societal impact of her research together with Helianthe Kort. In two roundtable sessions, she gave a brief presentation on the importance of light in healthcare. In the Pieterskerk in Leiden, lively discussions took place on topics such as: “Solutions in healthcare require people who can think and work in a multidisciplinary way” and “Who takes care of the healthcare professionals?”. It was also great to see that our own Minister of Education, Culture, and Science, Eppo Bruins, also found inspiration in light during his speech.
BL-group: Mariëlle Aarts participated in this event.
Second BL-group alumni event
10 September 2024, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Last year’s alumni event was a success; hence, the invitations for our second alumni event are sent. On October 24th, we will organize the second BL-group alumni event.
LumeNet 2024
5-6 September 2024, Lausanne, Switzerland
The PhD workshop was attended by 19 PhD students studying lighting and light-related topics. Eight mentors were involved to provide feedback to the PhD students. More information about LumeNet.
BL-group: PhD student Sietse de Vries presented his preliminary research directions and Juliëtte van Duijnhoven contributed as a mentor to this workshop.
NLITED summer school 2024
17-23 August 2024, Lund, Sweden
NLITED (New Level of Integrated TEchniques for Daylighting education) is an educational project that aims to improve knowledge on daylighting of both students and professionals of the building sector. This summer school entailed six days of seminars and activities, project work, a technical tour to discover the architecture of Lund, and a public event in which students presented their work. More information about NLITED.
BL-group: Juliëtte van Duijnhoven contributed as a teacher to this summer school.
Velux Living Places
21 July 2024, Copenhagen, Denmark
Living Places is an experimental living environment that shows we do not have to wait for future technology to construct healthier, more sustainable buildings for people alongside planet. Last summer, Living places came to life with a range of guests. Conversations were hosted with journalists, researchers and experts in the building industry.
Find more information about Living places and the conversations with experts here.
BL-group: Juliëtte van Duijnhoven was involved in one of the conversations.
Building Lighting TU/e 