SEMINARIOS DE INVESTIGACIÓN EN INGENIERÍA INFORMÁTICA Y DE TELECOMUNICACIÓN 2007-2008

Actividad de Formación Continua del Programa Oficial de Posgrado en Ingeniería Informática y de Telecomunicación

The chromatographic properties of the olfactory mucosa have long been considered to contribute to chemosensory

perception in mammals, presumably through segregation of odour components when presented in combination.

I will describe a new biomimetic sensing technology for complex odour detection, termed the artificial olfactory mucosa,

which explicitly makes use of this segregation principle, and exhibits behaviour reminiscent of the olfactory epithelium.

Experimental data from this device demonstrates temporal segregation of odorants due to selective phase partitioning

during odour delivery, in turn giving rise to complex spatio-temporal dynamics in the responses of the chemosensor array

population, which will be shown to lead to enhanced complex odour discrimination.

An analytical model and new measure of spatio-temporal information will be introduced that quantifies the contribution

of both space and time to the discrimination performance of the system.

Finally, I will consider the challenge of extracting stimulus-specific information from these new chemosensing devices,

which requires specialised time-dependent signal processing, information measures and classification techniques.

Dr. Tim C. Pearce is Director of the Centre for Bioengineering, University of Leicester, where he currently holds a

Readership in Bioengineering. He completed his first degree in Electronic Engineering (Honours), awarded by Warwick

University and received a PhD. from the same institution in 1997. He has since held the position of Visiting Research

Assistant Professor at the Department of Neuroscience, Tufts University Medical School, Boston, USA where he worked

on a DARPA supported research programme to translate principles of information processing in the biological olfactory

pathway over to practical to instrumentation for chemical sensing. He has published widely in the literature on new

approaches and technologies in the context of chemical sensing instrumentation based upon the olfactory (smell), which

specifically demonstrates how concepts taken from the biological olfactory system can be applied to achieve practical

performance gains. His current research is focused on neuroengineering, which is an emerging field at the intersection of

neuroscience and technology, seeking to understand the brain through the development of new technologies.