The 2025 ISES & ISEE Joint Annual Meeting convened global leaders in the field of exposure science and environmental health from August 17-20, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia. Over the course of three days, the conference featured seminars, workshops, poster sessions, and plenary lectures, which promoted the exchange of ideas and collaborative thinking. Although exposomics was not the central theme of the conference, both NEXUS and the exposome were well-represented. Key presentations highlighted the critical role of the exposome in understanding the relationships between environmental exposures and health outcomes.
On the first day of the conference, NEXUS Collaborator Douglas Walker, PhD, Emory University, hosted a pre-meeting workshop titled “High-resolution mass spectrometry workflows to study the exposome” which was taught by Anna Young, PhD, Emory Rollins School of Public Health, Donghai Liang, PhD, Emory University, and Xin Hu, PhD, Emory University who are internationally recognized experts in the development and application of untargeted high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) approaches for studying the exposome. Dr. Roel Vermeulen from Utrecht University gave the opening talk of the workshop, which was followed by detailed presentations that examined the analytical and bioinformatic workflows used to conduct HRMS-based exposome studies.
This full-day workshop provided participants with comprehensive training in all aspects of the HRMS workflow for characterizing the exposome, covering both theoretical and practical sessions. The workshop structure combined theoretical principles with actual analytical chemistry workflows as well as hands-on experience with the cutting-edge data analysis methods, empowering attendees to apply these methods to their own research projects.
Dr. Douglas Walker also co-led the symposium “Micro- and nanoplastic and human health; where do we stand?” with Roel Vermeulen, PhD and co-lead of the International Human Exposome Network ( IHEN). This symposium discussed research from human studies conducted within the CUSP cluster of five European projects and the Dutch MOMENTUM project. Dr. Kuanliang Shao, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Walker’s lab, also presented on leveraging exposome approaches to study plastic exposures in human populations.
Additionally, NEXUS ChemBio Analytical Hub co-lead Krystal Pollitt, PhD, and Elizabeth Lin, PhD, Yale School of Public Health, led the pre-meeting workshop, “Wristbands 101: Harnessing Wearable Tech for Personalised Environmental Exposure Assessment.” Approximately 40 participants attended the workshop that addressed the basics of passive sampling and practical applications of the technology. Drs. Pollitt and Lin shared insights on designing studies that use wristbands, best practices for deploying these wearable tools, and essential protocols for quality control and assurance. They also guided workshop attendees through exposure data collected using wristbands. The team also emphasized the need for harmonized approaches given the growing use of wristbands as wearable tools which are capable of capturing personalized measurements of chemical and biological exposures, as well as tracking how these exposures change over time.
Dr. Krystal Pollitt also presented key insights during the conference poster session along with Jeremy Koelmel, PhD, Yale University to highlight community-wide perspectives, methodologies, and applications in exposomics. Their poster highlighted the findings from Exposome Research Coordination Survey completed by the NEXUS ChemBio Analytical Sciences Hub, which is co-led by Dr. Pollitt and Thomas Metz, PhD, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and supported by team members Randolph Singh, PhD, Columbia University and Dr. Koelmel.
The objective of the survey was to aggregate data across laboratories to facilitate knowledge exchange on methodologies and identify scalable, harmonized analytical, and computational infrastructures for systematic exposome characterization. The survey to date has collected responses from over 165 respondents from 26 countries at 135 institutions, including academic (71%), government (9%), national (7%), and industry (7%) laboratories.
This survey supports the NEXUS sub-goal of aggregating data across diverse laboratories, the initiative aims to facilitate knowledge exchange on the exposomic coverage of both current and emerging technologies. This effort also seeks to identify streamlined, scalable, and harmonized analytical and computational infrastructures necessary for the systematic characterization of the exposome. A survey on methods and tools used to measure molecular features of the exposome was developed and sent out to over 1,000 community members. The survey consisted of questions pertaining to the type of omics-studies employed by laboratories (e.g., lipidomics, genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, xenobiotics analysis, etc.), types of sample preparation and extraction methods employed for each omics-field, instrumentation, and data-processing methodologies.
Further, this work is being presented at the MANA 2025 conference by Dr Metz. The survey is still open and can be accessed here: bit.ly/ChemBioSurvey.
Another key symposium was led by NEXUS Collaborator Carmen Marsit, PhD, Emory University and Yewei Wang, PhD, Emory University, titled “Advancing Exposome Research Across the Lifespan: Biomarkers, Big Data, and Exposure Assessment.” This symposium highlighted the cutting-edge research on environmental exposures through the lens of the exposome. Key topics that were discussed included the important role of exposome-wide association studies (ExWAS) for identifying critical risk factors, the role of epigenetic modifications in mediating early-life exposures, and the use of multi-omics to uncover molecular pathways affected by environmental insults. By focusing on studies both in early life and aging populations this symposium was able to consider the opportunities to utilize exposome research to inform actionable public health interventions, emphasizing strategies to protect vulnerable populations and vulnerable life stages to advance health equity.
One significant event that took place at this year’s ISES & ISEE Joint Annual Meeting was an Open Exposome Research Community Meetup hosted by the International Human Exposome Network ( IHEN) and led by Drs. Roel Vermeulen and Martine Vrijheid. The meeting featured discussions about building a network and fostering collaborations, the development of an Exposome Toolbox, along with the development of the Roadmap for Global Exposome Research.
This meet-up featured key presentations from Jana Klánová PhD, Masaryk University, who leads the Environmental Exposure Assessment Research Infrastructure ( EIRENE), the European Scientific Research Infrastructure ( ESFRI), that supports exposome research in Europe. NEXUS MPI Rima Habre, ScD, University of Southern California discussed the aims and goals of NEXUS (which have been highlighted in our newsletters and can be found on our website).
NEXUS and IHEN are highly aligned and this event is another example of the many collaborative activities the networks have engaged in. IHEN was developed during the later stages of the European Human Exposome Network ( EHEN), which is an umbrella network of nine research projects funded by the European Union’s framework program for research and innovation. The IHEN initiative is coordinated by Dr. Roel Vermeulen and Martine Vrijheid, PhD, Instituto de Salud Global de Barcelona ( ISGlobal). The mission of IHEN is to “… build a world-wide network to collaborate and improve human exposome research. The network - with over 500 members to date from 65 countries, brings together researchers, policymakers, and independent experts to enhance the impact of future studies in this field.”
NEXUS Collaborator Dean Jones, PhD, Emory University, urged the exposomics research community to emphasize the unique aspects of the exposome, mostly distilled into two concepts, cumulative lifelong exposures (and impacts) and integrated effects of multiple exposures and exposure types. He noted that focusing on these aspects would increase the impact of exposome research.
Overall, the 2025 ISES & ISEE Joint Annual Meeting was a success, bringing together a diverse and engaged community of stakeholders in exposure science and environmental health. For NEXUS members, the meeting offered a valuable platform to share their work, exchange ideas, and foster new collaborations with the broader scientific community. The field of exposomics has not developed in a vacuum. The expertise from ISES and ISEE members has been essential for exposomics to flourish as a field. Indeed, these two societies have likely contributed the most to its foundation. As such, the NEXUS team foresees ongoing partnerships with both ISES and ISEE in the future.