The 2026 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science ( AAAS) brought together global leaders in science, public health, policy, and innovation to address key scientific challenges facing the world today. The NEXUS team was pleased that the field of exposomics was part of the lineup.
The panel “ How the Human Exposome Will Unlock Better Health and Medicine” convened leaders in the field of exposomics to discuss the latest advances in understanding the impact of environmental exposures across the lifespan, and highlights the developments that have been made in the field since the signing of the Washington, D.C. Declaration on the Human Exposome at the Exposome Moonshot Forum in Washington D.C in May of 2025.
This panel included NEXUS MPI Gary Miller, PhD, Columbia University, Jana Klánová, PhD, Masaryk University who leads the EIRENE RI, and Thomas Hartung, MD, PhD, John Hopkins University, who serves as a joint leader of the Global Exposome Forum alongside an interdisciplinary leadership committee.
The panel was moderated by Clive Cookson from the Financial Times, and co-organized by Aidan Gilligan, SciCom, and Dr. Hartung. It was quite the showing for NEXUS given that Dr. Miller is MPI, Dr. Hartung leads the NEXUS Hopkins Hub, and Dr. Klánová is a member of the NEXUS External Advisory Committee.
This panel aimed to discuss the opportunities afforded by exposomics science, outline the roadmap of actions needed from the global community, and the strategies needed to address future challenges. Read more about the mission of the panel in this press release.
Dr. Miller’s presentation “The Human Exposome Project: The Biggest Public Health Opportunity of Our Time,” provided an overview of exposomics, and highlighted recent advances in the field and emphasized the role of NEXUS.
He also discussed the critical connection between exposomics and genomics,highlighting the recent Genomics Meets Exposomics meeting at the Mendel Museum in Brno, Czech Republic. This meeting brought together leaders from both fields to develop an action plan for the advancement of genes by environment studies to better understand human disease. Additionally, Dr. Miller underscored the importance of Exposome-Wide Association Studies (EWAS) in driving the development of exposomics.
Dr. Miller’s presentation can be viewed here on Youtube.
Dr. Klánová spoke about EIRENE and the European Infrastructure Program for exposomics, outlining key project goals and objectives that guide key exposome initiatives, including IHEN, the Global Exposome Forum, and the upcoming Global Exposome Summit occurring in April.
Dr. Klánová’s presentation can be viewed here on Youtube.
Earlier in the conference, Dr. Klánová spoke during the panel “Planetary Health, Novel Entities & Chemistry for the Future” which was organized and moderated by Bryan W Brook, PhD, Baylor University. This panel featured other researchers including Miriam Diamond, PhD, University of Toronto, and Paul Anastas, PhD, Yale University, who discussed the topic of planetary health from the perspective of different scientific fields.
Dr. Klánová’s presentation “Searching for unifying scientific framework” focused on the exposome concept and highlighted how this framework helps to bridge gaps across traditional disciplinary silos in science.
Dr. Hartung’s presentation “The Human Exposome Project: Putting Global Partnerships on the Map” highlighted updates from the Global Exposome Forum, which emerged from the Exposome Moonshot Forum held last May.
He discussed the transformative technologies, such as mass-spectroscopy, microphysiological systems, genome sequencing, computer, data, AI, and the computing costs for AI, which are aiding in rapidly advancing the field of exposomics.
Dr. Hartung also underscored the importance of the integration policy to advance exposomics, along with key initiatives such as the recent establishment of the pan-African chapter of GEF along, which will be facilitated by South Africa, along with the collaboration with Human Cell Atlas.
Dr. Hartung comments that “The number of chemicals registered is growing exponentially. Our controls are only slowly increasing if at all. The Exposome is based on a number of exponentially growing technologies. The right response with today’s science for a problem of our time.”
Dr. Hartung’s presentation can be viewed here on Youtube.
During the meeting, the team took the opportunity of being together in person to record a new episode of the NEXUS Podcast. We were honored to have Clive Cookson, a card-carrying journalist, serve as the moderator. Stay tuned for the podcast coming soon.
After the meeting Dr. Miller commented that “We spend most of our time working within our own disciplines. The breadth of science covered at AAAS forces scientists to step beyond their specific discipline to explore how it fits into the broader scientific universe. Exposomics benefits from greater engagement with other scientific disciplines and the AAAS meeting provided that forum.”
Overall, the meeting was a success and received notable support, including being featured in The Economist, in the article “The Human Exposome Project will map how environmental factors shape health.”
It has been great seeing the exposome getting attention from many news outlets, but for the most part, these have been top-tier scientific outlets. Getting coverage in a global financial magazine reaches an entirely different audience. We were thrilled to see a feature article in the Economist that emerged from the AAAS session.
You can read more about the coverage here, which includes a direct link to the article.