Yvonne de Kort is a Full Professor and Chair of Environmental Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). With her group, she investigates the effects of lighting conditions on human functioning (e.g., alertness, stress, sleep, and health), specifically targeting light effects for day-active people in real-world conditions. This explicitly includes both visual effects and circadian and acute effects beyond vision, via our biological clock and neural regions related to alertness and mood. The research brings together insights from psychology, chronobiology, and neuroscience and aims to translate fundamental insights in human responses to light to implications for the design of environments, lighting scenarios, and intelligent lighting solutions. We use lighting technology and Virtual Reality to tune light spectra, temporal and spatial dynamics. We investigate their effects through self-reports, psychophysiology (e.g., HRV, EEG), and task performance and employ EMA, (ambulatory) sensing, advanced statistics, data science, and AI approaches.

Uniquely, in addition to controlled studies in laboratories, a growing part of the research of her group takes place in living labs and in the field, where the aim is to test the effects of interventions and interactive installations in real-life situations. Additional research topics include the restorative and invigorating effects of light and nature scenes.