Abstract:
What do we know about the sense of smell and taste? What are fragrances and flavors? What molecules have a smell?
We are surrounded by scents - can you envisage a world without a smell, a rose without a scent? Fragrances and flavors are an integral part of our daily life. Imagine consumer products like fine fragrances, shower gels, or your favorite beverage and snack without any scent.
The basis for fragrances and flavors are aroma molecules. Today scent creators called perfumers and flavorists can select from a wide variety of aroma chemicals. While flavor molecules need to be identified in edible products before they can be considered as a flavor ingredient, fragrance molecules originate in the imagination and creativity of an organic chemist. The search for and synthesis of new aroma molecules is getting more challenging and is a multi-disciplinary activity – synthesis, analytical, evaluation and perfumers work side-by side. State-of-the-art fragrance compounds must not only elicit a special odor best combined with high impact, but also bring additional benefits for example higher stability, substantivity, diffusivity and blooming and of course need to be toxicologically and eco-toxicologically safe. How about rational design of aroma molecules via molecular modeling? What about structure-odor-relationship? What about inspirations from natural products?
In my lecture I will give insights in the legendary flavor and fragrance industry; talk about the challenges of aroma molecule synthesis and we will interactively smell some new and exiting aroma molecules! In addition I will give practical hints on how you can select a fine fragrance for yourself and your loved ones which you like from start to finish without driving the sales assistant in your department store crazy!
About the lecturer: Dr. Norbert A. Braun has over 12 years experience in various R&D functions in the flavor and fragrance industry. For Symrise he is currently based in Singapore as Vice President Innovation/Technology, Scent & Care, responsible for Applied Research in Asia Pacific.
Dr. Braun studied Chemistry and Biology at the Universität Hohenheim, Stuttgart (Germany) and received his Ph.D. from the same university in 1997 under the supervision of Prof. D. Spitzner. He then worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the group of Prof. M. A. Ciufolini at Rice University, Houston, Texas (USA) and Université Claude Bernard / Ecole Supérieure de Chimie Physique Elektronique, Lyon (France) before joining Symrise in Germany in 1999. He is based in Singapore since 2005.
His research interests center on natural and synthetic fragrance raw materials including their synthesis, analysis and application as well as on natural product synthesis; he is the author/coauthor of various papers and patents.