The 9th International Artificial Light At Night Scientific Conference

(ALAN Conference 2025)

Westport Woods Hotel, Westport, Co. Mayo, Ireland

October 28 – 30, 2025

www.artificiallightatnight.org

Programme of Speakers:

• Sonal Asgotraa, founder of Astrostays, India
• Ulrike Brandi, lighting designer, Germany
• Hector Linares-Arroyo, light pollution researcher, Spain
• Elena Maggi, ecologist, Italy
• Manuel Spitschan, chronobiologist, Germany
• Yana Yakushina, lawyer, Belgium

Dark Sky Ireland, together with Friends of Mayo Dark Skies, are honoured to be hosting, the 9^th International Artificial Light at Night Scientific Conference, taking place in Westport, Co. Mayo October 28th to 30th, 2025. This is the first time the Conference is taking place in Ireland and Westport has been selected as the key venue for its proximity to the Mayo International Dark Sky Park, one of the must-visit locations for dark sky enthusiasts across the globe due to its low levels of light pollution and relatively uninterrupted views of starry skies.

The ALAN Conference will see academics, astronomers and night sky enthusiasts, as well as lighting designers and technicians, gather in Mayo to discuss how and where light is used, how it is impacting biodiversity. It will also explore human experience of naturally dark skies and how excessive and inappropriate use of artificial light is affecting human wellbeing.

The programme will feature distinguished speakers from across the globe with keynote addresses from Sonal Asgotraa, Founder of Astrostays, Ulrike Brandi, lighting designer and founding member of the Transnational Lighting Detectives, Dr. Hector Linares-Arroyo, researcher in light pollution measurement and modelling, Dr. Elena Maggi, field ecologist and professor at the University of Pisa specialising in coastal marine habitats, Dr. Manuel Spitschan, the Rudolf Mössbauer Assistant Professor of Chronobiology & Health at Technical University of Munich and Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and Yana Yakushina, lawyer, researcher, and dark sky protection educator and co-founder of Living Night.

The ALAN Conference Call for Papers has been issued here and ALAN 2025 is seeking presentations related to all aspects of artificial light at night. Abstracts can be submitted via Oxford Abstracts by March 2025 on the topics Biology & Ecology, Governance & Regulations, Health, Measurements & Modelling, Social Sciences & Humanities, Technology & Design. It is hoped the conference will provide a platform for interdisciplinary networking and exchange and support the growing global movement towards preserving the dark skies. Whilst ALAN is primarily a scientific conference, it is open to researchers and professionals working in the area of ALAN/light pollution and its impacts, or addressing solutions, and submissions for oral or poster presentations relating to any of the conference topics are welcome. Registration for attending the conference is opening in Spring 2025.

Further details are available at darksky.ie and artificiallightatnight.org as they are confirmed.  

Speakers:

Sonal Asgotraa is the Founder of Astrostays.
An electrical engineer by education, Sonal merges Astronomy and community development interventions to create a community-led astro-tourism initiative that empowers local communities in remote areas through sustainable tourism by transforming village homestays into Cultural and Astronomy Hubs and bringing economic benefits of tourism directly to lesser-known, rural areas. 
Sonal was also a team member of the 2013 International Antarctic Expedition led by Polar Explorer, Sir Robert Swan, OBE

Ulrike Brandi is a lighting designer in Hamburg. She founded her office Ulrike Brandi Licht in 1986 and the Brandi Institute for Light and Design in 2013.
For over 35 years, she and her office have planned the artificial and/or daylight for more than 1,300 projects worldwide (interiors and exteriors) and collaborated with the most important architects of our time. She has designed the lighting for the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Terminal 2 and satellites at Munich Airport, Terminal 2 at Pudong International Airport, Shanghai, Rotterdam Central Station, the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Hafencity lighting master plan in Hamburg and the lighting master plan for the city of Rotterdam. Ulrike Brandi has curated exhibitions such as “The Secret of Shadows” at the German Architecture Museum and “Day Light Night” at the Istanbul Modern Museum. She is a founding member of the Transnational Lighting Detectives, Tokyo (1995) and has been a member of the Hamburg Lighting Advisory Board since 2005. She is an IALD Fellow.
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In her lighting design work and lectures, she is committed to using good lighting to create beautiful, pleasant, communication-friendly and inviting spaces indoors and in public spaces.  She is convinced that this will contribute to a more humane, fairer and more considerate society. She wants to raise awareness of the valuable resource of daylight and addresses its importance for health. Her lighting design protects the darkness in order to keep the view of the starry sky clear. Through the interplay of natural phenomena and traditional, cultural and technical knowledge, she finds solutions for more climate-friendly lighting.

Dr Hector Linares-Arroyo
Postdoctoral Researcher
IEEC-ICCUB (Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya), Barcelona, Spain

Dr. Hector Linares-Arroyo is a young light pollution researcher with experience in remote sensing, radiative transfer models, data processing, and sky brightness instrumentation. Combining a background in Engineering (BEng Aeronautics) and Astronomy (MSc), he focused his PhD on light pollution measurement and modeling under the supervision of Eduard Masana and Salvador Ribas.
Afterwards, he has been continuously working on various light pollution projects in different topics and institutions. For instance, he worked as a postdoc with Martin Aubé, where he contributed to improving the Illumina model. He coordinated ESA’s Night-Watch project, an international effort to design a night-time satellite mission. He also collaborated as a remote sensing expert on the Earth Explorer 12, European Urban Light Explorer proposal, and he has worked on different occasions as an administrative consultant.
His research is currently focused on two different areas. First, he is creating user-friendly light pollution assessment tools to close the gap between modeling and inexperienced stakeholders. Second, he is developing methodologies for creating sky brightness maps of vast areas representing the actual and hypothesized situations.

Dr Elena Maggi
Professor at the Marine Biology and Ecology Unit
​Department of Biology
University of Pisa, Italy

Elena Maggi is a field ecologist and professor at the University of Pisa (Italy). Her research focuses on the evaluation of the effects of natural and anthropogenic factors in structuring or modifying coastal marine habitats. Since 2016, she has investigated the effects of night-time light pollution on coastal communities, and in particular on trophic networks that include primary producers such as seaweeds, seagrasses and microalgae.
She is the coordinator of the AquaPLAN project (https://aquaplan-project.eu/), funded under the Horizon Europe programme, which deals with the interactive effect between light and noise pollution in marine and freshwater habitats. Within the project, she is the leader of activities aimed at monitoring and evaluate the effect of artificial light and noise on two priority subtidal habitats: seagrass meadows and macroalgal forests in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea (Italy).
She is member of GOALANN (https://goalann.org/), an international network of the world’s leading experts in marine light pollution, whose mission is to conserve the oceans by improving knowledge and awareness of marine light pollution, its ecological and societal impacts, and management options. ”

Dr Manuel Spitschan
Professor of Chronobiology & Health / Max Planck Research Group Leader
Technical University of Munich & Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics
Munich, Germany

Manuel Spitschan is the Rudolf Mössbauer Assistant Professor of Chronobiology & Health at Technical University of Munich and Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. 
After undergraduate studies in psychology at the University of St Andrews (2009-2012), he completed his PhD on melanopsin sensitivity in the human visual system at the University of Pennsylvania (2012-2016). Following a post-doc at Stanford University (2016-2017), he joined the University of Oxford on a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship, through which he collaborated with the Centre for Chronobiology in Basel (2017-2021). 
​He is the current Speaker of the Steering Committee of the Daylight Academy, Chair of the Joint Technical Committee 20 of the CIE and past Chair of the Optica (formerly OSA) Color Technical Group. 

Yana Yakushina
Research Fellow,
University of Ghent, Belgium

Yana Yakushina is a lawyer, researcher, and dark sky protection educator. She is actively involved in initiatives related to dark sky protection and space law.
Currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Ghent (Belgium) as part of the Horizon EU project – PLAN-B, Yana is actively shaping the legal framework for recognising light pollution as a critical environmental concern. Yana also serves as one of the scientific coordinators of the PLAN-B project. On the space law front, she serves as the Deputy Executive Director at the Space Court Foundation Inc., overseeing projects that regulate space activities globally, including the “Big Book of Space Law.”
Yana has successfully participated in international legal research projects in dark sky protection and space law, collaborating with organizations such as the EU Commission, DarkSky International, Starlight Foundation, International Astronomical Union, and UNOOSA, among others. Leading a research group within the IAU CPS Policy Hub, Yana analyzes national approaches to protecting dark and quiet skies.
Additionally, Yana is a member and advisor of various NGOs, including Dark-Sky International, Starlight Foundation, and the International Institute of Space Law (IISL). In 2023, she became a board member and co-founder of the Belgian dark sky protection organization – Living Night (IDA Chapter).

Dark Sky Ireland’s mission is to protect, restore and celebrate Ireland’s valuable dark sky heritage through raising awareness of light pollution in Ireland and promoting and preserving Ireland’s dark skies. They are funded by the Heritage Council and Community Foundation of Ireland. Further details are available at darksky.ie.

Mayo Dark Sky Park was Ireland’s first Dark Sky Park and has been awarded a gold tier for the quality of its night sky, free from light pollution. It is an important asset of natural night sky heritage showcasing some of the darkest, most pristine skies in the world. Nestled between the remote Nephin Beg Mountain Range and the unspoiled Atlantic coastline, the Dark Sky Park extends across an area of 150 square kilometres and its borders encompasses the lands of Wild Nephin National Park. The site is completely free to access anytime, day or night and with 3 signature-viewing sites to choose from. Further details are available from mayodarkskypark.ie.

Friends of Mayo Dark Skies is a community group working to support the goals of Mayo Dark Sky Park. Founded by the communities of Newport, Mulranny and Ballycroy, the group is the host and organiser of the Mayo Dark Sky Festival, which runs annually. Further details available at www.MayoDarkSkyFestival.ie