Helene Loos studied food technology at the University of Hohenheim and completed her doctorate in food chemistry at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) in 2015. During her doctoral studies, she investigated the aroma composition of breast milk and the behavioral responses of newborns to selected odorants from sweat and milk under the supervision of Professor Dr. Andrea Buettner and Dr. Benoist Schaal at the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV, Freising, and the Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l'Alimentation, Dijon. After her PhD, she conducted research at the Fraunhofer IVV in the Sensory Analytics department focusing on sensory evaluation and multisensory perception in cooperation with Professor Dr. Jessica Freiherr, RWTH Aachen. In 2017, she started her independent postdoctoral research work at the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy, FAU. In the course of this activity, she has successfully acquired numerous third-party funded projects, including an Emerging Fields Initiative project launched in April 2019 that enabled her to establish a junior research group.

Activities

The current research activities of the research group of Helene Loos at the Chair of Aroma and Smell Research at FAU follow two major lines of research. On the one hand, the group studies the psychophysiological reactions of humans to olfactory stimuli. This work was initially funded by the program “Förderung der Chancengleichheit für Frauen in Forschung und Lehre“ (FFL). In addition, as part of an Emerging Fields Initiative project, Helene Loos and her colleagues have established a methodological platform to investigate the chemical and biological basis of body odor formation and the role of body odors and volatiles in human chemical communication. Helene Loos is one of the lead scientists of the “Campus of the Senses” and “Sensory Sciences” initiatives at FAU and Fraunhofer IVV.

Awards

In 2021, Helene Loos received the Women's Faculty Award from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at FAU for her junior research group “Olfactory Perception and Chemocommunication”.

Focus

The research interest of Helene Loos is in the fields of aroma analysis, olfaction and perceptual psychology. Her group investigates the mechanisms of perceptual and behavioral phenomena in olfaction and applies a range of methods to identify and quantify odorants and their metabolites in biological samples. It characterizes odor-active substances in terms of psychophysical parameters and investigates their potential function in modulating behavior. The two main research areas are the analytical characterization of odor-active and odorless volatiles and the investigation of the perceptual and physiological effects of odor-active volatiles.

Methods

• One- and two-dimensional gas chromatography-mass spectrometry/olfactometry with different sampling methods
• Sensory evaluation, e.g. odor profile analysis, psychophysics
• Demographic and psychological questionnaires
• Analysis of facial movements (FACS)
• Analysis of physiological recordings, e.g. skin conductance or electrocardiogram