Benjamin P.C. Smith, PhD

Join us for a seminar by Benjamin P.C. Smith, PhD, Executive Director & President at Monell Chemical Senses Center.

Title: Detectors of the Exposome- An introduction to Monell, sensory toxicology, and shared ground with CEET

Location: KRB 253

Time: 3:00pm-4:00pm

Abstract

The Monell Chemical Senses Center is the world’s only independent research institute dedicated to the scientific understanding of chemosensation and interoception — smell, taste, chemesthesis, and the sensing of the body’s internal chemical state. Its laboratories span neuroscience, physiology, molecular and cell biology, genomics, experimental psychology, psychophysics, food science, chemistry and toxicology.

This talk is an introduction to the Center, and to sensory toxicology — the discipline that connects Monell’s work most directly to CEET’s. Chemical sensing is not confined to the nose: the body’s chemical detectors line the airway, the mouth and the gut, and they occupy three positions in the exposure–response pathway at once. They sit at the epithelia where inhaled and ingested agents make first contact with the body. They offer sensitive, non-invasive readouts of exposure and of exposure-related injury, from irritation thresholds to olfactory and gustatory function. And they generate the signals — odor, taste, burn — on which people base their judgements of danger, a determinant of symptom reporting and community concern that is measurable but rarely measured.

Drawing on work from across the Center and some of my own past works in toxicology, I will sketch what Monell is able to measure that environmental health studies do not usually capture, and identify potential points of contact with CEET’s work in air pollution and lung health, windows of susceptibility, environmental neuroscience, exposomics and community engagement.