The International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) Conference 2026 took place in Munich from August 30–September 2, 2026, under the theme,“Understanding and Responding to Global and Local Challenges: Environmental Epidemiology in a Changing World.”
The conference brought together researchers, public health professionals, and environmental health experts from around the world to explore emerging challenges and advances in environmental epidemiology. Prof. Annette Peters, Helmholtz Munich, served as Chair of the Local Organizing Committee, and Dr. Alexandra Schneider, Helmholtz Munich, served as the Chair of the Scientific Organizing Committee.
Exposomics was well represented at this year’s conference, including at the symposium “Building Exposome Research in Limited-Resource Settings: A Global Representation,” which was chaired by Myriam Mrad, PhD, University of Balamand and Dania Valvi, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai among other sessions. The symposium explored opportunities and challenges for advancing exposome research in low- and middle-income and resource-constrained settings.
The session featured international experts, including NEXUS MPI Dr. Rima Habre, University of Southern California, who presented the NEXUS Framework and its geospatial approaches for assessing the external exposome. Dr. Myriam Mrad presented on the lessons learned and emerging opportunities for conducting exposome research in limited-resource settings, highlighting practical challenges and opportunities for regional and international collaboration. She also presented a vision and implementation framework for early-life exposome research in low-resource settings based on her experience leading the Environmental Exposures in Lebanese Infants (EELI) cohort study.
Youssef Oulhote, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai discussed lessons learned and opportunities from exposome research in African cohorts, with an emphasis on feasibility, adaptation, and sustainability. Martine Vrijheid, PhD, ISGlobal, introduced the International Human Exposome Network (IHEN) and discussed global exposome cohorts and IHEN’s role and collaborative efforts in supporting these efforts.
Poornima Prabhakaran, PhD, Centre for Chronic Disease Control (CCDC), presented an overview of current exposomics research leveraging longitudinal studies and interlinked cohorts in India, highlighting opportunities to advance exposome research across diverse populations and capacity building needs, both human and analytical. The session concluded with a joint discussion on priorities for capacity building, collaboration, and next steps the community and coordinating centers can support to exposome research in resource-constrained settings.
NEXUS MPI Rima Habre, commented on LinkedIn that “I left energized from the excellent talks and discussions and inspired to continue to build on this momentum.” Overall this session underscored the growing global momentum behind exposomics and the importance of collaboration in expanding research capacity and advancing understanding of the exposome across diverse populations.
Members of the NEXUS team also presented in an ISEE 2026 symposium entitled “Mechanistic Exposome Epidemiology: Using High-Resolution Metabolomics and Exposomics to Translate Mixture Research into Prevention. This symposium was organized and chaired by Young-Mi Go, PhD, Emory University, Atlanta, and Aimin Chen, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania.
The symposium was very popular and showcased an integrated, mechanism-forward approach to convert findings from complex exposure mixtures into actionable prevention strategies. Importantly, there was very active engagement in discussion with European, Asian and African participants, emphasizing the global reach of interest in exposome mechanisms.
Following talks by Dr. Aimin Chen on environmental mixtures and exposome identification, including organic pollutants, consumer products, food additives, and metals, to guide association of exposures to disease prevention, Beate Ritz, MD, PhD, UCLA, addressed contributions of air pollution, pesticides, metals, and PFAS to neurodevelopment and neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.
Shuzhao Li, PhD, Jackson Labs, then provided a practical roadmap to decipher high-dimensional exposomics data and turn thousands of metabolic/exposomic features into biological meaning. He focused on data organization, annotation strategies, pathway and network enrichment, and reproducible workflows to deliver “decision-ready” outputs to identify mixture drivers, mechanistic hubs, and signatures that can be interpreted and translated into prevention and policy.
Dean Jones, PhD, Emory University, finished the symposium with an integration of high-resolution metabolomics and exposomics as a mechanism-forward platform for biomarker discovery, validation, and translation. He showed examples linking exposures and metabolic fingerprints to anchor mechanistic hypotheses involving oxidative stress, inflammation, mitochondria energetics to connect metabolome/exposome signals to actionable targets for intervention. Collectively, the talks spanned environmental exposure science, human disease, and epidemiology, emphasized the latest and most rigorous tools, and discussed challenges and alternative approaches to advance exposome biology, epidemiology and medicine.
The HERCULES Exposome Research Center at Emory University was also well represented at ISEE 2026 with 25 presentations spanning environmental exposures, climate and health, air pollution, exposomics, neurodegenerative disease, reproductive and maternal health. “It was great to see the exposome moving from concept to reality, with researchers presenting results of studies taking a holistic approach to the environment and its impact on health” noted Carmen Marsit, Emory University, who is Director of HERCULES Exposome Research Center and the Emory Collaborative Hub of NEXUS.
NEXUS Investigator Howie Wu, PhD, Columbia University School of Public Health, was also in attendance and co-chaired the session, “Environmental Exposures, Small RNAs, and Health Throughout the Lifecourse,” alongside Allison Kupsco, PhD, Columbia University School of Public Health. Small RNAs represent a promising class of molecular intermediates linking environmental exposures to biological pathways relevant for cardiometabolic, reproductive, neurodevelopmental, and aging-related outcomes.
Looking ahead, integrating these molecular signals with measures of the exposome will be essential to understanding how our environments shape health. This integration represents a key direction for exposome research and precision environmental health, with the potential to identify early biological changes, reveal opportunities for intervention, and inform prevention strategies tailored to people’s exposures and biological responses.
Overall, the coverage of exposomic research at ISEE 2026 reflected the continued growth of the field of exposomics, and it was great to see NEXUS members and collaborators well represented throughout the conference. In October, NEXUS looks forward to continuing this momentum at the International Society of Exposure Science (ISES) 2026 Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada where NEXUS MPI Rima Habre and NEXUS Hub Co-Lead Krystal Godri Pollitt are co-chairing the meeting alongside Tyler Pollock. This conference aims to bring together researchers from across the exposure science and exposomics communities under the theme “The Exposome in Action: Collaborative Science for Healthier People and Stronger Communities.”