Chris Hanson, the founder, and CEO of Aromyx (aromyx.com) delivers a wealth of information on the complexities of olfactory senses and how technology is providing new ways to digitize taste and smell. Hanson holds a bachelor’s and master’s from Stanford University and he has over 20 years of experience in sales and marketing for top Fortune 500 companies. He is a proven leader with a track record of success transforming sales numbers for major companies such as Seagate Technology in Russia, IBM, and many Silicon Valley technology startups. He serves on advisory boards and committees for major corporations and was an integral part of the development team behind the military’s sensor system that is used to detect deadly IEDs and nerve agents. Through the work with sensors, his interest in olfactory sensing progressed, motivating him to launch Aromyx to further advance the digitization of the sense of smell.

Hanson discusses in detail the many types of sensory data that can be measured with advancing technology, such as haptic data related to the sense of touch, but he states that taste and smell data simply has never been measurable in the past. Hanson’s company, Aromyx, has developed a sophisticated system, the first of its kind that enables scent and taste to be captured digitally. Their EssenceChip places olfactory and taste receptors onto a digital readout biochip. Measurable data can be useful for improving quality control and yield improvement for corporations in the food & beverage industry, agriculture industries, consumer packaged goods, and many more, especially when AI can be applied to the data. Aromyx’s system essentially removes what was once immeasurable data existing only within the human mind, to an external chip that allows the power of scent and taste to be shared easily. Hanson discusses Aromyx’s methods and how they were able to access the DNA from 402 olfactory receptors within the human nose and then clone it into a biosensor.

Hanson outlines how their technology provides an opportunity for quality control testers to compare new batches of foods and beverages, etc. against the ideal batch that they have internally rated as being exceptional, thus raising the bar for all their manufacturing. The taste and smell authority expounds upon some of the most intrinsic values of their digital nose, such as the fact that their platform maintains objectivity, whereas human testers often provide skewed, subjective results, not to mention the high cost of human employment. Additionally, seasoned and experienced human testers in quality control departments retire and their internal knowledge that provided for such exceptional batch quality, unfortunately, retires with them. Aromyx’s nose technology never retires and always delivers consistent objective results, over one batch of testing or one million batches.

Hanson talks about the deconstruction of smell and taste and how technology is enabling this process. He describes how quality and success are often increased when industries can move from a trial and error method to a computable one, and Aromyx’s technology is providing the means for smell and taste-based industries to rise.