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New HEI Research Report

HEI has published a new report Optimizing Air Pollution Exposure Assessment with Application to Cognitive Function, led by Dr. Lianne Sheppard.

Health Effects Institute Annual Conference 2025

Thank you to all who joined us in Austin, Texas for the 2025 HEI Annual Conference! We had a wonderful time connecting with colleagues from all over and look forward to future collaborations, including at our next conference to be held in Chicago April 26-29, 2026.

Sessions: 

Scientific Program at a Glance

 

 

Sunday, May 4

May. 4, 2025 - 10:00am

10:00 AM Registration Table Opens

11:30 AM Lunch

12:45 PM Welcome and Official Conference Opening

Elena Craft, HEI

1:00 PM Unleashing the Power of Artificial Intelligence for Environmental Health

Session chairs: Evangelia (Evi) Samoli, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and HEI Research Committee, and Michael Jerrett, University of California, Los Angeles, USA, and HEI Review Committee 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a transformative technology with immense potential use in the environmental health sciences. AI provides the opportunity to augment and accelerate research, helping scientists to generate hypotheses, design studies, collect and interpret large datasets, and gain insights that might not have been possible using traditional scientific methods alone. However, there are fears concerning loss of privacy, lack of transparency and accountability, increase in inequality, the carbon footprint and other issues affecting society. This session will explore AI’s opportunities and possible pitfalls as this technology is being increasingly adopted for environmental health research.

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1:00 PM Claudio Battiloro, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, USA

1:20 PM Davida Herzl, Aclima, USA

1:40 PM Perry Hystad, Oregon State University, USA

2:00 PM Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, Columbia University, USA

2:20 PM Q&A

2:30 PM Announcing Winners of HEI Awards and Fellowships, and Lightning Talks by Winners of the Jane Warren Award

Ellen Mantus, HEI

HEI’s summer fellowship program aims to encourage undergraduate students in the environmental health sciences to explore research opportunities in this area. The program provides financial support for a 10-week summer fellowship each year and is run in collaboration with the International Society of Exposure Science and the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology. The fellowship is open to mentors and students based in the United States.

The Jane Warren Award is given to graduate students or postdocs at academic or research institutions in the United States whose research is related to air pollution and health. Selection is based on the scientific merit of their research, quality of the submitted abstract, and relevance to HEI’s mission. This award is named in remembrance of Dr. Jane Warren, who joined HEI in the 1980s and led HEI’s scientific activities as Director of Science from 1999 until her retirement in 2008. The award covers travel and registration expenses for up to six awardees.

Watch the Recording

3:00 PM Break

3:30 PM Poster Session 1

5:00 PM Break

5:30 PM Opening Reception

Beverages, hors d’oeuvres, and socializing  

6:15 PM Conference dinner begins

7:00 PM Guest Speaker: Mayor of Austin, Kirk Watson

Monday, May 5

May. 5, 2025 - 7:00am

Breakfast

9:00 AM Spotlight on Recent HEI Activities and Accomplishments

Session chair: Elena Craft, HEI

HEI President Elena Craft will open the session. Next, Douglas Dockery, Harvard University, will offer perspectives on HEI’s contributions to air quality policy over the past few decades. HEI staff will then highlight HEI’s major accomplishments over the last year.

Watch the Recording

9:00 AM Elena Craft, HEI

9:05 AM Douglas Dockery, Harvard University, USA

9:35 AM Ellen Mantus, Donna Vorhees, Anna Rosofsky, and Pallavi Pant, HEI

10:05 AM Elena Craft, HEI

10:10 AM Discussion

10:30 AM Break

11:00 AM Parallel sessions

The TRACER Collaboration: Tracking Community Exposures to Air Emissions and Noise from Oil and Gas Development

Session chairs: Armistead (Ted) G. Russel, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, and HEI Energy Research Committee and Christine Wiedinmyer, University of Colorado, USA, and HEI Energy Review Committee

HEI’s Energy research program funded the TRACER collaboration to better understand population exposures to air emissions and noise from oil and gas development in multiple U.S. regions. The TRACER teams conducted air quality monitoring over the life cycle of oil and gas wells, and where feasible, assessed potential links between short-term and long-term community exposures and specific oil and gas development processes. The monitoring data improve understanding of exposure and were used to evaluate the collaboration’s TRACER model, which predicts chemical emissions from oil and gas development and their effects on both local and regional air quality. NASA’s Health and Air Quality Applied Sciences Team (HAQAST) funded a Tiger Team Project to complement the TRACER collaboration by analyzing satellite data representing the study locations with the potential to detect hot spots that might be missed by the TRACER collaboration’s ground-level monitoring.

Watch the Recording

From Global to Local: Advances in Estimating the Air Pollution Disease Burden

Session chairs: Kalpana Balakrishnan, SRIHER, India, and Jill Baumgartner, McGill University, Canada, HEI Global Initiatives Oversight Committee

Air pollution is the leading environmental risk factor worldwide, and the second risk factor for premature mortality overall, surpassed only by high blood pressure. In the last two decades, there has been significant progress in estimating air pollution’s burden of disease, including economic costs, and the data have been used in a variety of ways to promote air quality action. This session will explore recent methodological innovations as well as communications and policy applications at local and global scales, and the questions that still need to be answered to shape the future of air pollution burden estimation.

We apologize, a recording of this session is not available.

12:30 PM Lunch

1:30 PM Parallel sessions

Innovations in Assessment of Long-term Exposures to Outdoor Air Pollution

Session chairs: John Volckens, Colorado State University, USA, and HEI Review Committee, and Jana Milford, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA, and Chair of HEI’s Improved Exposure Assessment Studies Review Panel

In 2019, HEI issued a request for research applications (RFA) titled, Applying Novel Approaches to Improve Long-Term Exposure Assessment of Outdoor Air Pollution for Health Studies. This RFA solicited proposals for studies that would develop and apply scalable, novel approaches to improve long-term exposure assessment of outdoor air pollutants, evaluate exposure measurement error, and determine how different exposure assessment approaches might influence epidemiological health effect estimates. Five studies were funded and have recently been completed. This session will highlight the key findings and lessons learned through this research program.

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Developing Minds and Environmental Health Matters: Exploring Environmental Exposures, Neurodevelopment, and Mental Health in Children and Adolescents

Session chairs: Neeta Thakur, University of California, San Francisco, USA, and HEI Research Committee, and Ulrike Gehring, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and HEI Review Committee

Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Neurodevelopment and cognition relate to the way our brains develop and function. Neurodevelopment, cognition, and mental health are intricately linked, and many disorders related to these topics are often connected and begin in early life. Among children and adolescents, disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, depression, and behavioral disorders have gained increased awareness in recent years. Exposure to air pollution has been found to have adverse effects on neurodevelopment, cognition, and mental health outcomes in children and adolescents, while other environmental factors such as green space have been shown to have beneficial effects. To explore the interplay of these factors, this session will highlight the relationship between contextual environmental exposures (such as air pollution) and neurodevelopment, cognition, and mental health among children and adolescents.

Watch the Recording

3:00 PM Ice cream social break

3:30 PM Poster Session 2

5:00 PM Free Evening

Tuesday, May 6

May. 6, 2025 - 12:00am

7:00 AM Breakfast

9:00 AM The Road Ahead for the Legacy Diesel Fleet

Session chair: Tara Ramani, Texas A&M Transportation Institute and member of the HEI Heavy-Duty Diesel Fleet Turnover Panel

High concentrations of air pollutants have been documented in and around intermodal transportation facilities where large numbers of high-emitting older diesel engines operate. The continued prevalence of legacy on-road diesel engines in goods movement corridors and urban freight distribution networks has implications for both air quality and health. This session will explore the multitude of factors that affect the replacement rate of older diesel technologies, new data sources and methods to assess air quality and health, and the potential impacts on exposures and health outcomes associated with replacement requirements and incentives.

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9:00 AM Tara Ramani, Texas A&M Transportation Institute, USA

9:05 AM Ray Minjares, ICCT, USA

9:15 AM Daniel Horton, Northwestern University, USA

9:25 AM Arvind Thiruvengadam, PACCAR Inc., USA

9:35 AM Regan Patterson, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

9:45 AM Panel discussion and audience Q&A

10:30 AM Break

10:50 AM Poster Session 3

12:20 PM Lunch

1:00 PM Transportation’s Next Stop: The Benefits and Challenges of Emerging Technologies and Fuels

Session moderator: Michael E. Webber, UT Austin, USA

HEI’s Strategic Research Plan for 2025-2030 calls for investigating the effects on air quality, exposure, and health of the turnover of legacy fleets to cleaner technologies, examining the trade-offs and benefits of various new transportation systems and mobility scenarios, and assessing the implications of differential uptake of various new technologies. Panelists in this session will discuss transportation-related innovations and the associated trends with technologies and fuels that might obtain a meaningful market share. Their insights will help to guide HEI research and indicate which technologies and fuels would be worthwhile for further scientific assessment in the foreseeable future. 

Watch the Recording

1:00 PM Michael E. Webber: Introduction to the session

1:05 PM Moderated panel discussion

Daniel Sperling, University of California, Davis, USA 
Gary Minsavage, ExxonMobil, USA 
Timothy French, Truck & Engine Manufacturers Association, USA
William Chernicoff, Senior Manager for Global Research and North American Projects, Toyota Mobility Foundation, USA  

2:00 PM Q&A

2:25 PM Session ends

2:30 PM Conference Closing and Adjournment 

Elena Craft, HEI
Location
304 E Cesar Chavez St
Austin, TX 78701
United States
Program Downloads
PDF icon HEI Poster Assignments 2025
PDF icon FAQ HEI Annual Conference 2025

Contacts

Conference Program Contact
Dan Crouse
dcrouse@healtheffects.org

Conference Registration Logistics Contact
Robert Shavers
rshavers@healtheffects.org
(617) 934-1020

  

HEI Code of Conduct

HEI fully expects that all participants who attend any in-person or online meeting or event behave with the utmost respect for peers, colleagues, staff, volunteers, researchers, sponsors, and everyone across the HEI community. It is our sincere desire that every event, meeting, and gathering we host or participate in fosters and encourages an inclusive, positive, and welcoming environment for all.