Do you know how your nose smells? When chemical signals travel through the air, some of them go up your nose and are trapped by the mucous membrane lining the inside of our nose. These chemicals then diffuse through the water-like substance and are changed into an electrical signal (a process called "transduction") so the information can be transmitted to the brain along the olfactory nerve. Scientists and engineers are trying to replicate this process with an electronic device in order to detect very specific chemical signals. Dr. Cole and Smart Sensors and Devices Research Group at Warwick University are working to develop a device that can detect certain chemical signals in the air. They hope that some day such a device will be able to do things like: tell the difference between different pheramones (chemicals secreted by animals that trigger some social response), determine whether or not food products have gone bad before they make anyone sick, pick up scents of individual people during search-and-rescue missions, and locate mines buried underground. Eventually, Dr. Cole and her team hope to also be able to collect time and distance data from detected scents.
Dr. Cole received her undergraduate degree (Bachelor of Science) from the University of Montenegro and earned her Doctorate from Coventry University in the United Kingdom. She is trained as an Electrical Engineer
Learn more about Dr. Cole and her research
More information about the Sensors Research Laboratory (they do lots of other research about smell and smelling devices)
Learn more about Electrical Engineering and engineering in general
Here's some more information about how we smell
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