Smell & Tell | Inside the Writer's Study (A Mystery in Seven Scents)

Une collaboration visuelle avec l'intelligence artificielle qui n'a donné lieu à aucune « hallucination » grâce à Nano Banana ; un phénomène pour le moins rare. Cela n'aurait pas été possible sans les principes mathématiques du cubisme et écouter la musique d'Angine de Poitrine tout en donnant des consignes à l'IA (vivement recommandé). Et voilà! Apologies if I butchered the French language; I'm a non-French Michelle.

EVENT

What: Smell & Tell | Inside the Writer's Study

Where: Ann Arbor District Library (D/T Branch, 4th Floor)

Evening: Tuesday, September 8th, 6:00 PM-7:30 PM  

Daytime*: Wednesday, September 9th, 1:30 PM-3:00 PM                                  

A study door in the museum is left ajar. Curiosity gets the best of you, and you decide to enter the room. The first thing you notice is a cloisonné box sitting on top of a meticulously organized desk. The room is immaculate. Everything is in its place except for the box. There's something different about it. 

You lift the lid and discover seven glass vials. The wood-lined box smells familiar, but you can't quite place the smell. The atmosphere in the room speaks to your senses as you consider whether to open the vials and smell them. After all, you weren't exactly invited. 

It's then that you notice a small note card beneath the vials that reads, "Each of the seven vials contains a specific memory from this room. Take good care of them and allow them to breathe once in a while. When you're done smelling them you'll understand why." 

With an invitation like that, how could anyone refuse? Especially you, dear reader. Step into a writer’s study for an evening of olfactory intrigue as we evaluate the essence inside each of the seven vials on fragrance blotters and solve a mystery. 

The Smell and Tell series of art+science programming is led by Michelle Krell Kydd, a trained nose in flavors and fragrance who shares her passion for gastronomy, sensory evaluation, and the perfume arts in Glass Petal Smoke. Smell & Tell builds community through interactions with flavor, fragrance and storytelling.

Notes & Curiosities: 

Daytime Smell & Tell events at the Ann Arbor District Library are new in 2026. The addition was sparked by growing interest in Smell & Tell programming across ages and life stages in the Ann Arbor community. Smell & Tell debuted at the library in June 2012. It's been many trips around the sun since then.

Research Paper Puts Sensory Evaluation in the Higher Ed Classroom

Armonía (Harmony) by Remedios Varo (1956)

A peer-reviewed paper I co-authored with collaborators at the University of Michigan is published in the current edition of the Journal of Statistics and Data Science in Education (JSDSE). The paper outlines a pilot educational module at the University of Michigan that integrates machine olfaction into an undergraduate deep learning course. By combining chemistry, machine learning, and sensory evaluation, the curriculum challenges students to work with subjective sensory data, demonstrating the feasibility of teaching multimodal data science.

The inclusion of sensory evaluation in a deep learning course is novel as far as papers accepted by JSDSE go. The good news is that our pedagogy-driven endeavor doesn't end with our paper. Dr. Ambuj Tewari received a second New Initiatives/New Instructions (NINI) grant from the University of Michigan that will allow us to take our findings to the next level (which is why I'll be busy teaching this summer). 

Curious? Read the paper and sniff out the facts in the sensory evaluation portion. Readers of Glass Petal Smoke who work in the flavor and fragrance industry will appreciate it. Perfume fans may also find it interesting, and don't have to worry about decoding a research paper. It's all about learning in small incremental steps. The more you do it, the better you get at it.

Citation: Han, Y., Kydd, M. K., Ward, J., & Tewari, A. (2026). Teaching Machine Olfaction in an Undergraduate Deep Learning Course: A Pilot Integrating Chemistry, Machine Learning, and Sensory Evaluation. Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education, 34(3), 372–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/26939169.2026.2665103

Notes & Curiosities

Teaching 100+ students in a large auditorium how to evaluate smells using fragrance blotters was and remains one of the most satisfying teaching experiences I've had at the University of Michigan to date. It proved what I've always known by experience; that sensory evaluation is a powerful multisensory teaching and learning tool when combined with other disciplines. The sense of smell is memory's sense; it doesn't get more pedagogical than that.

I have many students to thank with regard to the evolution of Smell & Tell lectures, especially those that were part of summer boot camps held by MSTEM Academies at the university. Thanks also go out to students who invited me to give a TEDxUofM talk in 2015 (a talk that resonated with a wider audience after the COVID-19 pandemic) and students who shared their anosmia and congenital anosmia stories with me after the event. 

BTW: One of the reasons why Dr. Tewari and I ended up collaborating was the presence of my TEDxUofM talk online; the rest, as they say, is history.

I would be remiss if I didn't thank the Ann Arbor District Library for saying yes to monthly "Smell & Tell" events in 2012, and every year afterward. There isn't a day that goes by that I don’t forget how much creative freedom the library gives me. Honestly, writing this post makes me feel like I'm dreaming with my eyes open.