Major international olfaction consortia and projects.
# | Consortium / Project | Region / Lead | Main research focus | Why it matters / potential use | Status / period | Verified source |
1 | SMELLODI – Smart Electronic Olfaction for Body Odor Diagnostics | EU; TU Dresden, Germany | Digital olfaction, body odor, sensors, ML, clinical diagnostics | Combines biomimetic sensing, body-odor chemistry, materials/nanotechnology, perception and ML. Particularly relevant for building digital representations of odors and remote medical diagnostics. | 2022–2025 | |
2 | DREAM Olfaction Prediction Challenge | International; DREAM/Rockefeller/IBM-associated research community | ML prediction of odor perception from molecular structure | Landmark benchmark for molecule → percept/odor descriptor prediction. Models were trained on molecular features and human perceptual ratings. Highly relevant to AI/ML olfaction. | Challenge completed; data/code remain important | |
3 | ROSE – Restoring Odorant detection and recognition in Smell dEficits | EU; coordinated by CNRS, France | Digital olfaction + neurotechnology + smell restoration | Developed the concept of a Digital Olfaction Module (DOM) linking odor sensing with artificial stimulation, aiming ultimately at an olfactory prosthesis. | 2021–2025 | |
4 | POTION – Promoting Social Interaction through Emotional Body Odours | EU; University of Pisa | Human chemosignals, emotional body odor, controlled odor delivery | Investigated chemical signatures associated with emotional states such as fear/happiness and built a computer-controlled Potion Delivery System for olfactory stimulation. | 2019–2024 | |
5 | ODEUROPA | EU; coordinated by KNAW, Netherlands | AI + NLP + computer vision + olfactory heritage | One of the strongest examples of an olfactory knowledge infrastructure: extracts smell concepts from historical text/images and represents them in the European Olfactory Knowledge Graph. | 2021–2023; resources continue | |
6 | European Olfactory Knowledge Graph – ODEUROPA EOKG | Europe | Knowledge graph, ontology, semantic olfaction | Particularly interesting if you are thinking about an Olfaction Data Universe / semantic layer. Models odorants, smell sources, olfactory qualities, places, events, emotions and historical evidence. | Operational research resource | |
7 | Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research (GCCR) | Global | Human smell/taste, clinical olfaction, epidemiology | A genuinely global research consortium created around COVID-related smell/taste dysfunction and expanded toward broader chemosensory science. Excellent example of large-scale harmonized human olfactory data collection. | Active | |
8 | Digital Olfaction Society (DOS) | International | Digital smell, e-noses, AI, sensors, odor transmission/reproduction | International scientific/technology community connecting sensors, AI, odor capture, encoding, transmission and reproduction. Increasingly focused on complete capture → digitize → transmit → reproduce pipelines. | Active | |
9 | DOS Global Scent Digitization Challenge | International / Tokyo | Odor digitization and transmission | Teams capture characteristic city odors, convert them into digital representations, transmit them and attempt restitution elsewhere. Conceptually very important for an Internet of Smell architecture. | Developing initiative | Global Scent Digitization Challenge (Digital Olfaction Society) |
10 | SniffPhone | EU/Israel-led consortium | Breath VOCs, nanosensors, cancer screening, smartphone | Developed a smartphone-connected nanosensor platform for disease detection from exhaled breath. Excellent translational example of VOC → sensor → algorithm → clinical decision. | Completed R&D project | |
11 | VOGAS | EU + international clinical sites | Breathomics, gastric cancer, VOC sensors | Developed/validated breath analysis approaches combining electronic-nose concepts using gold nanoparticles/MOS sensors with spectroscopic techniques for gastric-cancer screening. | Completed project | |
12 | NanoSmell | EU; Weizmann Institute-led | Nanotechnology + artificial odorants + olfactory receptors | Radical approach using DNA-origami/nanotechnology to design ligands targeting olfactory receptors, including the concept of remotely switchable artificial odorants. | Completed | |
13 | ECRO – European Chemoreception Research Organization | Europe / international membership | Fundamental smell and taste science | Long-standing research organization promoting and coordinating chemoreception research, including olfactory neuroscience, receptors, sensory science and behavior. | Active | |
14 | olfACTION | Germany / EU ERC | Neural circuits of olfaction | Investigates how learning and context alter information propagation among olfactory brain areas. Valuable on the biological/neuroscience side of an olfactory technology stack. | 2024–2028 | |
15 | GCCR Smell & Taste Challenge / Self-Check programs | Global | Standardized human chemosensory phenotyping | Uses globally distributed surveys/self-tests and harmonized measurements, providing a useful model for collecting large multilingual/cross-cultural olfactory phenotype datasets. | Active |