Meet Monell: Amber Alhadeff on How the Gut and Brain Influence What We Eat and When
As a neuroscientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, Dr. Amber Alhadeff studies how communication between the gut and brain influences feeding behavior....
Monell Sensations
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Meet Monell: Michael Leone Takes Us Behind the Scenes of Science
When most of us think about scientific research, we picture laboratories, microscopes, and scientists busy at the lab bench advancing groundbreaking discoveries. What we often do not consider is the infrastructure that makes those discoveries possible, the people and systems working quietly behind the scenes to ensure researchers can focus entirely on science....
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Meet Monell: Benjamin P.C. Smith on Leadership and Why Our Senses Matter
Our senses are not luxuries. They are lifelines. -- Ben Smith ...
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Meet Monell: Kevin Bolding … Making Smell Memories
At the Monell Chemical Senses Center, scientists study something we often take for granted: how our senses shape the way we experience the world. For Dr. Kevin Bolding, that work begins with a simple question: how does the brain form memories? At Monell, Bolding leads......
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Meet Monell: Nancy Rawson on Advancing Sensory Science
Nancy Rawson didn’t begin her career planning to lead a scientific institute. But a series of decisions guided by curiosity and a willingness to take chances eventually brought her back to a place she now considers home: the Monell Chemical Senses Center. Today, Rawson serves......
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A Breakthrough Moment for Monell’s Team Science
Since 1968, Monell has brought diverse disciplines together to solve some of the toughest problems in chemosensory science — and, with industry partners, translate discovery into impact. Taste, smell, and related sensory systems span neuroscience, biology, behavior, and medicine — the definition of multidisciplinary “team......
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Meet Monell: Bruce Kimball on Chemical Communication and Animal Behavior
Before Bruce Kimball joined Monell as a chemical ecologist, he was a research chemist working within a U.S. Department of Agriculture research institute studying chemically-mediated animal behavior. It was there he discovered a new (to him) realm of chemical communication: applying chemical and behavioral assays......
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Meet Monell: Matthew Aquilino on Taste and Itch
Matthew Aquilino always knew that he wanted to study science. He credits his interest in chemosensory science to his first graduate school course lecture that focused on the physiology of the senses of taste, smell, and touch....
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Meet Monell: Gary Beauchamp on the Power of Collaboration in Smell and Taste Science
When Gary Beauchamp came to Monell, he never thought it would be for a lifetime. When he arrived more than 50 years ago, the Center was a small, experimental institute at the University of Pennsylvania. He had just finished his PhD at the University of......
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Meet Monell: Rebeca Méndez-Hernández on Hunger, the Brain, and Metabolic Disease
As a postdoctoral fellow in Guillaume de Lartigue’s lab, Rebeca Méndez-Hernández studies how the brain listens to the body, detangling the sensory signals that shape hunger, metabolism, and behavior....
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Meet Monell: Danielle Reed on Taste, Smell, and Compassion Through Science
Danielle Reed didn’t always know she would become a scientist. In fact, she started college as an economics major, drawn to the elegance of math but unsettled by how abstract it felt. Everything changed when she took a psychology course rooted in biology—and stepped into......
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What Is SCENTinel® Teaching Us About Smell Disorders, Four Years On?
First, there was SCENTinel® 1.0, then 1.1, and now 2.1, the different iterations of the rapid screening tool for detecting new-onset loss of smell developed by scientists at the Monell Chemical Senses Center. Since its launch in late 2020, several studies have validated its accuracy......
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The Gamut of Sensory Nutrition Research at the Monell Center
The overall program of sensory nutrition research at the Monell Center spans quite literally soup to nuts, from molecular biology to policymaking....
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My Big Aha Moment: A Tribute to Anosmia Awareness by Jenifer Trachtman, Monell Director of Development
A Tribute to Anosmia Awareness by Jenifer Trachtman, Monell Director of Development...
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New Research Labs, New Questions to Answer
Getting to know Kevin Bolding, PhD Earlier this year, Kevin Bolding, PhD, joined Monell as an assistant faculty member. While Bolding started his academic journey in genetics at Texas A&M university, he received his PhD in neural and behavioral science from SUNY Downstate Health Sciences......