The non-residential building ventilation strategy, interconnected with thermal comfort, expo-sure to pollutants and energy consumption issues, is crucial for the environmental transition of buildings. It imposes to reinforce our knowledge on the key drivers of indoor environmen-tal quality (IEQ). To that end, a deeper understanding of how human thermal plume interacts with indoor pollutant distribution is essential. This paper explores the use of an advanced thermal manikin, as a pioneering tool in assessing thermal comfort and air quality in various settings, including vehicles and buildings. The manikin effectively thermally interacts with its environment as a human. It embeds five sensor-instrumented areas to assess exposure to pollutants in its vicinity. The paper provides the detailed comprehensive process involved in developing an advanced manikin; outlines the fully operational capability to meet specific research requirements; provides the first experimental assessment of the VOC distribution around body induced by the human thermal convection.