简介
Martine Vrijheid, is Research Professor and Head of Research Programme on Environment and Health over the Lifecourse in ISGlobal. As environmental epidemiologist, her research is driven by the need to protect vulnerable population groups, in particular children, from the harmful effects of environmental (chemical, physical and social) exposures. She has a demonstrated record of international leadership in child health, environmental pollutants, and exposome research, leading EC-FP7 projects CHICOS (Developing a Child Cohort Strategy in Europe; 2010-2013, €2.5M) and HELIX (Human Early Life Exposome; 2014-2018, €8.6M), H2020 project ATHLETE (Advancing Tools for Human Early Lifecourse Exposome Research and Translation; 2020-2025, €12M), and Horizon Europe project IHEN (International Human Exposome Network; Coordination & Support Action; 2024-2026, €3M). Through these and many other national and international projects, she spearheaded the study of exposome and multi-omics determinants of child health, was instrumental in building a network and FAIR data infrastructure of >30 birth cohorts in Europe (https://data-catalogue.molgeniscloud.org/catalogue/ssr-catalogue/EUChildNetwork). She is currently building a global network for exposome research (https://humanexposome.net/). In particular, she led the construction of the HELIX “deep” exposome database with completely comparable chemical pollution biomonitoring data, geospatial data, child and adolescent health outcome data, and multiple omics signatures, in mothers and children, used by many researchers and resulting in the publication of over 100 papers (majority D1). She published impactful research on the molecular omics signatures of environmental exposures (e.g. Maitre, Nat Comm 2022; Stratakis, Nat Comm 2025), and on the link between the exposome and child health (e.g. Agier, Lancet Plan Health 2018; Warembourg, JACC 2019; Vrijheid, EHP 2020; Guil-Oumrait, JAMA Network Open 2024).
She is active in many translational activities, international expert panels and advisory boards (for example on the European Food Safety Agency’s panel for risk assessment of brominated flame retardants, and the advisory board of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s Human Ecosystems transversal theme). She is member of the European Research Foundation panel for the evaluation of ERC starting grants (ERC-StG-LS7 panel), and of various other evaluation panels of projects and researchers. She is associated editor of Environmental Health Perspectives journal.
As Associated Professor at the UPF, she leads the Environmental Epidemiology course within the Masters of Public Health. She supervises a large team of young pre and postdoctoral researchers and technicians, and is director of many past and ongoing PhD and master’s theses. She has supported many early career researchers to reach independent tenure-track positions and build their research groups (e.g. Dr Oliver Robinson, ex-postdoc, now MRC fellow and Lecturer at Imperial College London; Dr Dania Valvi, ex-PhD student, now Associate Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai New York, and Dr Lea Maitre, ex postdoc, now Assistant Professor at ISGlobal). She has published >450 scientific articles, cited
>45,000 times (H-index 100).
