Excellence in Digital Olfaction – DOS 2024 Concluding Remarks & Awards

DOS 2024 has confirmed that digital olfaction is no longer a conceptual promise, but an emerging technological and scientific reality.

Over these two days, we have seen how olfaction long considered the most elusive and least explored sense can now be measured, encoded, modeled, transmitted, and reproduced. What was once intangible is becoming quantifiable. What was biological is becoming digital.

This evolution directly echoes the founding vision expressed in 2010 by Marvin Edeas, founder of the Digital Olfaction Society:

The idea is to create devices which not only can capture odors, but also turn them into digital data, transmit them anywhere in the world, and restitute the original odor.”

Fourteen years later, this statement no longer reads as a projection, but as a technical roadmap that is actively being realized.

Several key messages clearly emerged:

First, olfaction is inherently interdisciplinary. Progress arises from the convergence of chemistry, neuroscience, engineering, data science, and artificial intelligence. No single discipline can advance this field alone.

Second, AI has become central. From signal decoding and pattern recognition to odor reconstruction and predictive modeling, artificial intelligence is not an accessory—it is the backbone enabling scalability, robustness, and standardization.

Third, applications are expanding rapidly. Healthcare, environmental monitoring, food quality, safety, immersive technologies, and communication are no longer speculative domains; they are active development areas.

Most importantly, DOS 2024 reaffirmed a core principle:
Digital olfaction is not about replacing the human sense of smell, it is about extending it, making it shareable, reproducible, and actionable across space, time, and disciplines.

As we close this edition, one message stands out clearly:
The challenge ahead is no longer whether digital olfaction will happen, but how responsibly, collaboratively, and intelligently it will be built.

DOS will continue to serve as a platform where science meets technology, where vision meets feasibility, and where the forgotten sense becomes a strategic one.

Thank you to all speakers, partners, and participants for shaping this collective momentum.
The dialogue continues and the future of olfaction is now open.

DOS 2024 Awards