19th – 23rd February, 2024

We had a great week at our first Human Ecosystems Training Course “Exploring gene and environmental exposure interactions to understand human health and disease” .

The EMBL-EBI training team welcomed 28 participants from Europe, Africa, the Americas and Asia to participate in a brand-new course exploring gene and exposure interactions. Fourteen trainers working at the forefront of human cohort and exposure research gave lectures and led hands-on training as part of the 5-day course. Topics included finding and exploring disease associations in human cohort data, conducting polygenic scores and genome-wide association studies, identifying genotype and exposure interactions, and approaches to define the molecular mechanisms of exposures. Prof Roel Vermeulen (University of Utrecht) gave an EMBL-wide seminar on the Exposome. Course participants then had the opportunity to explore a new electric car which is about to embark on a journey to measure air pollution levels across European cities, a project led by Roel and Kees de Hoogh (Swiss TPH) .

We are very thankful to our trainers for providing their expertise; Maria Cerezo (EMBL-EBI), Emily Jefferson (HDR UK, Uni of Dundee), Elliot Sollis (EMBL-EBI), Sam Lambert (Uni of Cambridge), Tomas Fitzgerald (EMBL-EBI), Natàlia Vilor-Tejedor (CRG, SPN),  Xiangyu Jack Ge (Wellcome Sanger Institute), Giorgia Renne (EMBL-Heidelberg), Pu Xia (University of Birmingham), Marcos C. (EMBL-EBI), Kees de Hoogh (Swiss TPH), Roel Vermeulen (University of Utrecht), Marc Jan Bonder (University of Groningen) and Oliver Stegle (EMBL Heidelberg).

We also thank the EMBL-EBI training and support staff, especially the Course Organisers Dayane Araújo and Marta Lloret Llinares, and Scientific Organisers Amy Foreman, Mallory Freeberg, and Saskia Hiltemann.