We’re happy to launch our news posts series “Partner in the spotlight”, through which we will introduce all of the EXIMIOUS partners, on a monthly basis. As we are kicking-off this series on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, it is a nice coincidence that our first partner in the spotlight is the Danish National Research Centre for the Working Environment (NRCWE/NFA), represented within the EXIMIOUS project by five female researchers, excited to contribute to several fields within the project.

The NRCWE is a world-class national research institute under the Ministry of Employment. NRCWE’s goal is to generate and disseminate knowledge to contribute to a healthy and safe work environment in accordance with the technical and social developments in Denmark. Four of NRCWE’s research competences are especially relevant for EXIMIOUS: occupational epidemiology, developmental toxicology, particle toxicology and occupational microbiology. The NRCWE researchers involved in EXIMIOUS will investigate job exposures related to immune function in two occupational cohorts;
1) the nationwide DOC*X cohort, constructed by linkage of several Danish registers, will be used to investigate the association between several different occupational exposures and the development of
autoimmune diseases (Karin Sørig Hougaard and Camilla Sandal Sejbaek). First, neural network analyses will be applied, and second, findings will then be verified in traditionally conducted epidemiological studies. Exposures are investigated both in adulthood and during fetal life.
2) the Waste handling cohort will investigate if exposure to bioaerosols during work with different types of waste are associated with changes markers of immune system function, e.g. markers of  inflammation (Anne Mette Madsen, Pil Uthaug Rasmussen, Ulla Vogel). Both existing and newly collected data will be used, and blood samples will also be provided for analysis in EXIMIOUS.