Stat Cafe - Dr. Robert Pellegrino
Engineering smells in the digital age
- Time: Tuesday, 11/3/2026 from 11:10AM to 12:25PM
- Location: BLOC 448
Description
Food aroma characterization has long relied on labor-intensive, costly analytical workflows. This talk presents a predictive modeling framework to complement these methods, addressing three core challenges: characterizing the perceptual properties of individual odorants from molecular structure, identifying which odorants drive the character of a complex odor, and modeling how odorants interact to determine odor quality. Together, these advances parallel the development of colorimetry, where characterizing primaries, understanding their brightness, and establishing mixing rules enabled color to be predicted, reconstructed, and optimized computationally. The same progression is becoming achievable for aroma, paving the way for quantitative odorimetry.
Our Speaker
Dr. Bob Pellegrino is an assistant professor of sensory science at Texas A&M and an affiliated scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, specializing in smell and texture perception. With doctorates in Food Science and Medical Research, his research supports both fundamental discovery and translational outcomes, informing product development, sensory evaluation methods, and interventions to improve food enjoyment and nutrition. He directs the Texas A&M Sensory Science Facility, serving academic and industry partners, and serves leadership roles within the Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research (GCCR) and the International Society of Neurogastronomy (ISN).