The Society of Light and Lighting AGM, Awards and Presidential Address was held on the 14th May at CIBSE, London. The lighting community came together to congratulate and support Carolina Florian Valbuena CEng MCIBSE MSLL AILP as the new SLL President.
SLL President, Carolina Florian, thanked those that had helped her, including the SLL volunteers and staff, and the Past Presidents for their amazing work and dedication to the Society. Special thanks were given to SLL’s Immediate Past President, Kristina Allison for handing over the SLL in such high spirits with the outcomes of the ‘Get Curious’ initiative continuing for years to come.
Carolina also set out her theme for the year ahead: making lighting more thoughtful, purposeful, and impactful. Her presidency will be global in reach, grounded in people, and persistent about why our work matters. Her focus is to raise the profile of the profession among the audiences who most need to recognise its value, while strengthening the Society of Light and Lighting’s presence beyond its traditional centres.
This includes extending engagement across all regions — not only in London, the UK and Ireland, but internationally, where innovative and ambitious lighting design is shaping the built environment. A further priority will be ensuring the Society more fully reflects the diversity of the profession, embracing a wider range of backgrounds, career pathways, roles and perspectives, and giving greater recognition to the breadth of talent within the lighting community.
“Most clients have opinions about lighting without understanding it well. Many architects make decisions about it without our input. Government sets policy influencing it without our expertise in the room. The public lives inside it without knowing how to get proper advice, especially when it is already affecting people’s health, physically and/or psychologically.
That is a communication shortfall. And it is ours to fix.”
Carolina Florian Valbuena SLL President
Read Carolina's Presidential Address and see the Society’s Officers for 2026.
There were also celebrations for this year’s award winners.
The Regional Award presented in recognition of the work undertaken by an individual on behalf of the Society in the regions was presented to Ross Munro MSLL, Regional Lighting Representative for Scotland.
The Lighting Award, given to acknowledge outstanding service to the Society was presented to Helen Loomes FSLL.
Honorary Fellowship, given by the Society in recognition of significant contribution not only of services to the Society but to the wider lighting profession was awarded to Nigel Harvey and Suzanne Castine.
The President’s Medal was first awarded to Joe Lynes in 2009 and recognises a significant and lifetime contribution to lighting. The recipient was John Aston FSLL.
There were two awards for published papers in Lighting Research & Technology Journal. The Leon Gaster Award was given to Cosmin Ticleanu, Lorna Flores-Villa, Paul Littlefair and Gareth Howlett for the paper ‘Assessing melanopic equivalent daylight illuminance in office spaces using a simplified approach for predominantly cloudy climates’. Lighting Research and Technology 2025; 57(6-7): 522-542.
The second award was the Walsh Weston Award and was given Christophe Martinsons and Nicolas Picard, for the paper’ Untangling light in noisy luminous environments’. Lighting Research and Technology 2025; 57(4-5): 320-322.
The recipient of the 2025 Jean Heap Bursary Award, Nicholas Whitton, gave an update on his research project ‘The effects of near infrared on sleep outcomes via mitochondrial pathways: A comparative study on the impact of near infrared exposure on human performance, sleep metrics and circadian responses in workplace settings’.
Congratulations were given to all award recipients.