Fragrance Sensing for a Fragmented Market
ABSTRACT
The sense/sensor analogies are easy: eye is to camera as ear is to microphone as nose is to [blank]. Maybe the last one isn’t so easy. Cameras and microphones are everywhere in our devices and currently feeding the data hungry internet. But what about smell? Smell is a human being’s passive safety sense and yet its been most difficult to realize in sensor form. I will explore the challenges of creating an “electronic nose” and the potential applications it could unlock. I will discuss the success of other sensors and how they burden newcomers. And I will explore what it might take for environmental sensing to break through to the big time – will machine learning be enough?
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Nishit Goel received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India, in 2010. He earned his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA, in 2018. At Penn State, Dr. Goel worked on micromachined quartz crystal-based resonators for pressure and in-situ thin film stress sensing applications.
After completing his PhD, Dr. Goel joined TDK InvenSense as a Senior Advanced Technology Engineer in 2018 and later moved to TDK USA Corporation in 2025. At TDK, he works on various MEMS-based environmental sensing solutions for mass market applications such as air quality monitoring, gas safety devices, and automotive safety and comfort. His research interests include bulk acoustic wave resonator-based sensors, chemical sensors, magnetic sensors, smart material-based sensors, and electrochemical sensors. He has authored over 17 journal and conference articles in the field of physical sensors and holds 3 granted patents.