Keynote Speakers

Paul Beggs

TOPIC: Aerobiology in 2050: what we know and a vision for filling in the gaps

Paul is an Associate Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He is the Director of the Lancet Countdown Oceania Regional Centre, which tracks progress on health and climate change in this region. An environmental health scientist with a background in biological and climate sciences, he is an international authority on the impacts of climate change on allergens and allergic diseases. He previously won the Eureka Prize for Medical Research for his ground-breaking work in this area, and in 2023 he was presented with the Public Health Association of Australia Tony McMichael Public Health Ecology and Environment Award. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society in 2023.

ABSTRACT:
Aerobiological knowledge has increased substantially since the mid-1900s. Building on this solid foundation, the field of aerobiology is currently going through a multifaceted revolution. With regard to pollen aerobiology, this includes the technological transition to automated real-time monitoring, remote sensing of source regions, environmental DNA identification of airborne pollen, the development of sophisticated modelling and forecasting systems, and digital health applications. Some of the benefits and advances of these include more-detailed aerobiological data (finer taxonomic levels and temporal scales), broader geographic coverage, and more immediate, accessible and personalised pollen information for self-management of allergic respiratory diseases. Despite this revolution, there remain major gaps that the international aerobiological community should aim to fill over the coming years. Perhaps the biggest is the lack of knowledge about the aerobiology of several regions of the world. The establishment of an international network of aerobiological monitoring with coordination, cooperation, and data sharing facilitated perhaps through a United Nations organisation (e.g., WMO, UNEP) would go a long way to rectifying this current inequity.

Keynote Speakers

Jean Bousquet

TOPIC: Embedding MASK-air (digital health) and SILAM (aerobiology modeling) for optimal control of allergy to pollen

Jean Bousquet, Honorary Professor of Pulmonary Medicine at Montpellier University, France and Professor of allergology at Charité, Berlin, Germany, has chaired GINA (Global Initiative for Asthma: 1999-2000), ARIA (Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma) and the WHO Global Alliance against Chronic Respiratory Diseases (GARD, 2006-2013). He has a research interest in the mechanisms of allergy, multimorbidity of allergic diseases, severe asthma and the digital transformation of health and care to sustain Planetary Health. He has published over 1,000 papers in PubMed, has a Hirsch factor of 118 (Clarivate) and has been listed as the most influential author in asthma with 5 of the 22 best cited papers (Qu et al, Respir Med, 2018, 137:206).

ABSTRACT:
Plant species vary under different climate conditions and the distribution of pollen can be used to assess the impact of climate change. In 2015, MASK-air^® (Mobile Airways Sentinel networK for rhinitis and asthma) was launched as a project of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP-on-AHA, DG Santé and DG CONNECT) to develop an early warning system to inform patients about the beginning of the pollen season. SILAM (System for Integrated modeLling of Atmospheric composition) is a global-to-meso-scale dispersion model developed by the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI). It provides information on atmospheric composition and air quality as well as pollen and pollution. POLLAR (Impact of Air Pollution on Asthma and Rhinitis, EIT health) has combined the MASK-air clinical data with SILAM data. A new Horizon Europe grant, CATALYSE (Climate Action to Advance HeaLthY Societies in Europe; grant agreement number 101057131), which started in September 2022, aims at better understanding climate change as well as ways to counteract it. One of the objectives of this project is to develop early warning systems and predictive models to improve the effectiveness of adaptation strategies to climate change. One of the early warning systems to be developed is focused on allergic rhinitis (CATALYSE Task 3.2). It stems from a collaboration between the FMI (Finland), Porto University (Portugal), MASK-air SAS (France), ISGlobal (Spain), Hertie School (Germany) and the University of Zurich (Switzerland).

Keynote Speakers

Paloma Cariñanos

TOPIC: Healthy and Low allergenicity green spaces for the cities of the future

Paloma Cariñanos is Professor of Botany at the University of Granada, Spain. She is also coordinator of FAO's SilvaMediterranea WG on urban and periurban forestry since 2020, and Vice-President of the Spanish Association of Public Parks and Gardens (AEPJP). Paloma has a career as an Aerobiologist for more than 30 years, focusing her line of research on allergen emissions in urban environments and the interactions between bioaerosol and atmospheric pollutants.

She is an expert in identification, characterization and mitigation of the impact of allergenic species in urban forests, assessment of the ecosystem disservices provided by urban forests, and identification of the impacts of climate change on urban tree species. Among its main achievements are the development of an Allergenicity Index for urban green spaces that allows the estimation of the allergenic risk of these areas based on the species they contain, and the assignment of an Allergenic Potential Value to more than 1000 species of trees. frequently used in the main climatic regions of the world.

ABSTRACT:
Emissions of allergenic pollen by some of the main species that make up urban green spaces constitute one of the main disservices of urban green infrastructure, with a great impact on the health of the population. Some of the causes that have generated this situation have been the massive use of a few plant species, the introduction of exotic species, botanical sexism or inadequate management and maintenance of these spaces, exacerbated by the impact that climate change is having on them. the reproductive phenology of some species. The allergenic characterization of the main species of urban trees and the estimation of the allergenic risk that these spaces may pose to the population are some useful tools for the planning and design of sustainable and healthy green spaces for the percentage of the population affected by adverse reactions to the presence of allergenic pollen.

Keynote Speakers

Bernard Clot

TOPIC: Automatic and real-time - the ongoing (r)evolution in aerobiological monitoring

Bernard Clot leads the Biometeorology Group at MeteoSwiss, taking care of the phenology and pollen monitoring networks in Switzerland. Over the past decade, he has played a key role in getting real-time pollen measurements off the ground in Europe, with the automation of the Swiss pollen monitoring network and the initiation of the EUMETNET AutoPollen Programme. Both cover the entire information chain, from the measurements through to the diverse range of products, developed in close collaboration with a number of partners and stakeholders.

Bernard Clot was a founding member of both the International Ragweed Society and the European Aerobiology Society. He served as President of the International Association for Aerobiology, of which he has been an executive committee member since 2002. To recognise his contribution to field, he was presented with the award of Honorary Member of the Swiss Society of Allergology and Immunology, one of the main end-user groups of pollen information in Switzerland.

ABSTRACT:
In less than a decade, what once seemed a distant goal has become a reality. In situ pollen and fungal spore data can now be obtained automatically in real time and at high temporal resolution. Technological advances are making it possible to gain a much more detailed understanding of the parameters that control aerobiological phenomena, and thus to improve forecasts.

Further developments may also make it possible to monitor other large aerosols, such as microplastics. In Europe, the users’ community is actively developing validation and standardisation methods, as well as a common infrastructure that will provide easier access to these technologies and to the data produced. With these new developments, aerobiology - the study of bioaerosols - is entering a new dimension, with cutting-edge tools to serve fields as varied as health, agriculture and research.

Keynote Speakers

Carmen Galán

TOPIC: World History of Aerobiology

Carmen Galán is Professor of Botany in the University of Cordoba, Spain. She is member of the Expert Group in the Observatory of Health and Climate Change, Ministry of Health, Spain; expert member on Air Quality in the Spanish Standard Association (UNE); and member of different groups for CEN European standards (AFNOR). Carmen is coordinator of the Spanish Aerobiology Network (REA), Past President of the International Association of Aerobiology (IAA), and she has participate in the coordination of  different Working Groups in the European Aerobiology Society (EAS), for Quality Control and Organizing Symposium.

Carmen has been also involved as Chair of different working groups in other societies or programs, e.g., Co-Chair of Allergens Committee at the WAO, Chair of Working Group on Aerobiology & Pollution at the EACCI; and Co-Chair of WG on Quality Control in EUMETNET-AutoPollen. Carmen is Editor-in-Chief of Aerobiologia, the International Journal of Aerobiology, Ed. Springer; and she was Chair in the VI European Aerobiology Society (EAS). Carmen is Honorary member of the International Association for Aerobiology (IAA) (2018) and Honorary member of the European Aerobiology Society (EAS) (2020).

ABSTRACT:
It has long been suspected that atmospheric particles could affect living beings. Hippocrates (460-377 b. C.) maintained that “Man can be attacked by epidemic fevers when he inhales air infected with pollution hostile to the human race". Lucretius Caro (98 b. C. - 54 b. C.), presented that “…When the sun's rays let in pass through the darkness of a shuttered room, you will see a multitude of tiny bodies all mingling in a multitude of ways inside the sunbeam, moving in the void…”. The first references related to pollen appeared during the 15th century, with Monardi (1462-1536) studying the stamens in flowers and Van Helmont (1577-1644) presenting the “rose catarrh”.

The origin on aerobiology can be traced back during the 17th century with the “first microscopy” building by Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723). Micheli (1679-1737), illustrated the “seeds” of many fungi, discovering that these particles can be contaminants transported by the air.

In the 18th century, Sprengel (1793) presented the adaptive mechanism for airborne pollination; and Night (1799) added that the wind could transport pollen over great distances.

At the beginning of the 19th century was accepted the fact that pollen from some plant species, and spores from ferns, mosses, and fungi, were usually released into the air and wind transported. As an interesting example, important to remark the great role of Darwin (1809- 1882) and Ehrenberg (1849-1872) in Aerobiology. When Darwing traveling in the “Beagle”, on a scientific expedition, he found near the Cape Verde Islands dust transported in the atmosphere from North Africa; Ehrenberg helped in the identifications of organisms, both supporting the importance of long-distance transport. Pasteur (1822-1892) studied airborne particles using a volumetric method; and Miquel (1850-1922) carried out the first long and periodic sampling of the atmosphere with volumetric methods. In application to Medicine, Bostock (1773-1846) presented to the Royal Society of Medicine the “catarrhus aestivus”, and Blackley (1820-1900) demonstrated this sickness experimentally with himself, introducing the term of “hay fever”.

The term of “Aerobiology” was introduced with Meier (1893-1938). In 1964, the International Biological Program (IBP) supported this discipline, and the NASA funded the Atmospheric Biology Conference. IBP officially ended in 1974, and the International Aerobiology Association (IAA) was created in the first International Congress of Ecology, held in Hague in July 1974.

At the middle of the 20th century, and interesting discussion was focused on the quality results obtained with the different spore traps in used; for example, in a symposium on Aerobiology, held by the Linnean Society of London in 1957, Gregory (1907- 1986) criticized that “…the various kinds of spore trap in use up to 1950 shows that freely exposed traps could never provide unbiased estimates of all constituents of the air spore at the frequent intervals necessary to show that their numbers were affected by changing weather”. Today, the most used instrument in the world is the Hirst type spore trap, a method counting with the European norm EN16868, 2019.

However, at the beginning of 21st century, special interest arose for automatic pollen and fungal spore counting systems. Today, these studies progress in the frame of the EUMETNET AutoPollen Programme for "Serving as a Proof-of-Concept for a European automatic pollen monitoring network using high temporal-resolution real-time measurements".

Keynote Speakers

Ioanna Pyrri

TOPIC: Aeromycology: research progress and future challenges

Ioanna Pyrri is an academic mycologist at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, in Greece. Along with research activity, she teaches mycology in undergraduate and graduate students.She is also the Curator of micromycetes of the ATHUM Culture Collection of Fungi, included in the ATHUM Mycetotheca. She has a long-standing experience on the study of airborne fungi in outdoor and indoor air in diverse environments with culture-based and culture independent methods.

Her research focuses on the diversity, abundance and fluctuations of fungi in the air with classical methods and implementation of molecular tools. The 25-year study has resulted in the enrichment of the ATHUM Culture Collection of Fungi with several hundreds of fungal strains originating from the ambient and indoor air. Ioanna has received by the IAA in 2006 the Young Aerobiologists Award, for her contribution to aerobiology.

ABSTRACT:
The fungi are omnipresent, abundant constituents of virtually all ecosystems on Earth. They serve diverse functions exhibiting an unusually high degree of pleiomorphism and have evolved to utilize air as their key dispersal medium. The role of airborne fungi is of much concern for human affairs. The interest for their study was triggered by phytopathogenic and allergenic fungi and nowadays has been expanded to fungi in houses, working environments and schools for well-being of occupants, in hospitals for detecting infectious agents, in industries for safety of products, in libraries, museums and galleries for protection of cultural heritage, in ambient air for air quality and correlation to pollution, in natural processes for biometeorology, etc.

A systematic study of airborne fungi was launched in early 20^th century, although their presence in the air has been documented much earlier. The gravitational method on glass slides or petri plates were originally used. It was the mycologist J. Hirst who recognized the need for a volumetric sampler with time resolution and engineered in 1952 the first spore-trap slit impactor that is widely used until today. The development of several samplers were based on trapping of fungal spores either on adhesive surfaces for direct identification or on nutrient media for recovering fungi. The two strategies are complementary, but each one has limitations that even their combination cannot eliminate. The advent of genetic analysis revolutionized aeromycological studies. Molecular tools were employed in order to contribute to accurate identification of common species in the air, in large genera like Aspergillus, Cladosporium, Penicillium or non-sporulating fungi. Furthermore, the high throughput sequencing enabled the direct analyses of environmental DNA originating from the air revealing a wealth of fungal diversity dominating the atmosphere and in much higher concentrations than anticipated. Metagenomics, metatrascriptomics and metabolomics are very promising for aeromycological studies. In addition, sampling devises have been developed which are able to detect, analyze and identify airborne fungal spores and pollen by light scattering, laser-induced fluorescence or holography, using signal or image processing in order to classify spores in real time or near real time.

A plethora of fungal species has been documented in the air worldwide, both outdoors and in diverse constructed habitats. Nonetheless, our knowledge of their occurrence in air is still incomplete, due to the difficulty in identification and to the dissimilarity of investigation methods. For monitoring and development of a world net on airborne fungi, there is an urgent need for standardization of methodology based on classical and modern methods. This can be achieved by collaboration of research groups moving toward complementary practices. An holistic approach incorporating additional evidence into existing knowledge will advance aeromycology in a new era.

Keynote Speakers

Laurence Rouil

TOPIC: Pollen monitoring and forecasting within the Copernicus Atmosphere monitoring Service

Dr. Laurence Rouil has been appointed as Director of the Copernicus Atmosphere monitoring services at ECMWF in February 2024. She received her PHD in applied Mathematics in 1995 and has more than 25 years of experience in the field of air pollution and atmospheric chemistry modelling, developed at Ineris, the public French Institute for industrial environments and risks. Before joining ECMWF, she was the Director of the strategy and science policy for this organisation. Since  2014, she is the chair of the EMEP steering Body, the scientific program dealing with air pollutants concentrations and deposition monitoring and control under the UNECE Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air pollution.

ABSTRACT:
Since 2014 the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring service, implemented by ECMWF on behalf of the European Commission, delivers relevant near real time (NRT) information about the atmospheric composition and its impacts on air quality, human health, ecosystems, radiatiative forcing , solar radiation and climate variables. CAMS operates at the global and regional (European) scales. It is built upon an integrated approach which combines observation data and models with the most up-to-date and appropriate methodologies to  provide the best ambient air concentrations forecasts and assessments. Pollens monitoring and forecasting is one of the component of the regional portfolio and more details about their implementation and performance are given in this presentation.

Pollen modelling is carried out by a unique set of eleven regional air quality models run by European teams which have developed robust cutting-edge systems. The median average of the outputs provided by the eleven models is used to build up an ensemble model, which is more robust and usually performs better than the individual models. Modelling work is complemented and evaluated by monitoring data gathered from European aeroallergen  monitoring networks.

CAMS provides every day of the year forecasts of pollen concentrations, expressed in grains/m3, for 6 species considered as among the most allergen: alder, birch, grass, mugwort, olive, ragweed. Collaboration with interested users and experts from the aeroallergen community is essential to tailor developments and propose service evolutions that reflects current state of the art and needs. CAMS has set-up several approaches to work in close collaboration with the user communities and they will be detailed in the presentation: national collaboration programmes  (NCPs) to facilitate CAMS data uptake by national experts, contribution to the Copernicus Thematic Hubs, in particular the Copernicus Health Hub that gathers and displays showcases for targeted applications, contribution to other initiatives like the European Climate and Health Observatory (Clim-ADAPT).