Sandalwood Workshop 2026

The Sandalwood Workshop 2026 aims to bring together experts from various fields to collaboratively explore interdisciplinary methods for understanding the cultural and medicinal significance of sandalwood. The workshop will also focus on documenting its unique olfactory characteristics and discussing strategies to conserve the increasingly scarce sandalwood population in India. This event will host talks from experts in the fields of design, data science, internet of things (IoT), wood science, library science and archival, law, and perfumery.

Building on the success of the Sustainable Sandalwood Conference 2025, this upcoming workshop continues the dialogue on conserving and cultivating sandalwood in South India. Sandalwood, revered for its fragrance, cultural significance, and economic value, faces pressing challenges from overharvesting, habitat loss, and fading traditional knowledge. Designed as a collaborative forum, it highlights new scientific insights, innovative practices, and policy directions to strengthen collective efforts toward a sustainable future for sandalwood.

Topics to be discussed in this workshop

• Emerging technologies in digital olfaction
• Application of IoT for sandalwood conservation
• Current research and conservation challenges
• Capturing and preserving indigenous knowledge
• Policy frameworks and community involvement
• Plan on interaction with local sandalwood farmers 

Agenda (tentative)

Time	Activity / Talk
09:30	Pre-session chat & Coffee
10:00	Welcome and Inaugural speech Prof. Srinath Srinivasa
10:30	Talk by Prof. Simon Niedenthal
11:00	BRAIN: A low-cost electronic nose and mobile app Prof. David Aleklett Kadish
11:30	Coffee break
11:45	Talk by Prof. Lizette Reitsma
12:15	Talk by Prof. Shalini Urs
12:45	Lunch Break
14:00	Additional talks / Roundtable discussion
15:30	Closing Remarks

Talks

Smell is often approached as a sense that is highly subjective, where olfactory experiences are captured linguistically and transmitted in textual form. This stands in contrast to other senses like sight and hearing where recording, storage, and digital processing are routine procedures. The nature of smell makes it more complicated to digitally capture than images and audio and the human nose will continue to play a key role in olfactory perception for the for esmellable future, but there remain several key applications for electronic noses.

E-noses, as they are also known, are often used in classification and detection tasks. They could, for example, be useful in the olfactory grading of sandalwood and the detection of fresh cuts to sandalwood trees. However, we have also been experimenting with spatiotemporally distributed uses of e-noses. With these techniques, they could be used to map the smellscape of sandalwood stands, to measure plumes in these ecosystems, and to track the long-term status of sandalwood forests and plantations through conducting repeated measurements over time.

Here, I present the design for a low-cost e-nose that we call BRIAN (Broadband, Relational, Interactive Artificial Nose). BRIAN is built using mostly off-the-shelf components which are readily available for purchase. It has a 3D printed enclosure. The physical device is paired with a mobile app for integration of GPS location data and digital annotations in the form of voice notes and images. Together, the physical device and mobile app represent a leap forward in the ability to document and map smellscapes.

Bio

David Kadish is a lecturer in Interaction Design at Malmö University. His work and research includes interactive art installations, electronic sensor systems, 3D printed objects, and software and firmware. He is currently working on detecting sound in the soil, measuring soundscapes of forest ecosystems, and producing e-nose-driven smellscape maps.