Archive for November 18th, 2009
Sandalwood: More than Just a Pleasant Smell
by stephen on Nov.18, 2009, under ChemSem 10
This week’s seminar was Sandalwood: More than Just a Pleasant Smell. The speaker was Jeffrey A. Turk, an organic chemist. He did his undergraduate work at Cleveland State University and his graduate work (MS & PhD) at the University of Cincinnati. After his postdoctoral work he went on to do some work for C.B. Research and Development (now Adesis, Inc.) developing small molecule drug, and also some work for International Flavors and Fragrances creating new aroma chemicals. The speaker was good, the presentation was interesting and easy to follow.
One of the new things I learned in this seminar is that there are about 400 genes that code for olfactory receptors. Another thing I learned is that natural sandalwood oil sells for $6000-$10000 per kg. And for the olfactory treshold (OT), the higher the number the stronger the smell.
The other students seemed to be attentive during the seminar. There were also a large number of questions at the end, and the speaker answered all of them well.
This seminar did encourage me to look into learning a little more about the topic. However I don’t think I would be very interested in doing any research on it, and because of that, at this point doing graduate studies at the speakers school does not really interest me.
One of the reasons I think this seminar was interesting is because it was different, a large number of the seminars we have had this semester have had a lot to do with pharmaceutical, but this one have a good picture of some other chemistry career. If I had to describe this seminar in one sentence it would be, “sandalwood and other key ingredients used in the perfume industry.”
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