This month, NEXUS is proud to spotlight the SMARTER Project (Sensors and Metadata for Analytics and Research in Exposure Health) from the University of Utah. In a special feature for the NEXUS blog, the SMARTER team shares insights about the project’s aims, current work, importance, and ways to connect.
Author: Mollie R. Cummins
Understanding how environmental exposures impact human health is among the most pressing challenges in environmental health research. Our daily exposures to air pollutants, chemical agents, physical stressors, and more can substantially influence disease risk, health outcomes, and quality of life. Yet, integrating and making sense of complex environmental data remains a critical barrier to progress.
Enter SMARTER (Sensors and Metadata for Analytics and Research in Exposure Health) project, a new effort at the University of Utah aimed at revolutionizing how environmental exposure data is managed, shared, and reused. Funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), SMARTER builds on the University of Utah’s previous innovations in exposure health informatics, including the Exposure Health Informatics Ecosystem (EHIE), and addresses foundational challenges that limit the reproducibility and impact of environmental health research.
What Is SMARTER?
SMARTER is a five-year research project dedicated to improving the FAIRness (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) of environmental exposure data. The project focuses on developing a scalable, user-centered infrastructure that supports the collection, annotation, and reuse of sensor-based environmental health data.
At its core, SMARTER seeks to answer a deceptively simple question: How can we ensure that exposure data—often complex, sensor-derived, and collected across diverse studies—can be reused efficiently and meaningfully across the scientific community?
The SMARTER project has four specific aims:
- Develop Logical Models for Sensor Metadata
- Create a User-Facing Metadata Repository
- Enable Event-Based Formats for Exposure Data
- Develop Prototype Workflows for FAIR, AI-Ready Data
What Does “FAIR Data” Mean—and Why Does It Matter?
A key element of SMARTER’s mission is to produce FAIR data — that is, data that is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. These principles, first outlined in 2016, are increasingly regarded as essential for maximizing the value of scientific data.
Let’s break this down in simple terms:
- Findable: Can other researchers easily discover your data using search tools?
- Accessible: Is the data available in a usable format, along with any additional information needed to use it?
- Interoperable: Can your data be combined with other datasets using standard formats and vocabularies?
- Reusable: Is there enough context (metadata, documentation) for others to use your data accurately?
Building on EHIE: The Exposure Health Informatics Ecosystem
SMARTER does not begin from scratch. It is grounded in the University of Utah’s long-standing work on the Exposure Health Informatics Ecosystem (EHIE) - an informatics ecosystem designed to support the full data lifecycle in exposomic research.
EHIE was developed through the NIH PRISMS (Pediatric Research using Integrated Sensor Monitoring Systems) initiative. It addresses critical challenges in exposure science, such as data collection, integration, visualization, and modeling using advanced Big Data technologies and event-based data architectures.
Why SMARTER Matters Now
Environmental health research is at an inflection point. The tools to collect rich, sensor-based data have matured, but the infrastructure to manage and reuse that data is lagging behind. Studies are still too often siloed, data lost to time or incompatible formats, and research outcomes not easily generalizable.
By focusing on metadata, event-based data modeling, and community-driven tools, SMARTER is moving toward a future where environmental exposure data is transparently documented, reproducibly integrated, easily shared, and ready for AI and machine learning applications.
Learn more
Whether you are an exposure health researcher or share our interest in research informatics, the SMARTER team would like to connect with you.
- Visit the SMARTER website. The website is a great place to learn more about the project. There, SMARTER shares information about the project and materials for input from the exposure health research community.
- Meet up with SMARTER at ISES-IEEE 2025. This summer, SMARTER is headed to the ISES-IEEE 2025 meeting in Atlanta, GA from August 17th-20th, to exchange new findings and innovations with the exposure health research community. Several members of the team, including MPIs Drs. Ram Gouripeddi and Mollie Cummins, & Research Scientist Fatemah Shah-Mohammadi will be presenting work from SMARTER. The Early Bird Registration deadline is May 14th. Hope to see you there!
- Join the SMARTER mailing list. SMARTER sends out quarterly newsletters with brief updates on the project, including any new publications or presentations. Sign up here.
The University of Utah SMARTER Project is funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (“Community-Driven Sensor Metadata Ecosystem for Exposure Health“, 1R24ES036134-01, Multi-Principal Investigators Ramkiran Gouripeddi & Mollie R. Cummins).