Speaker

Since the start of her PhD (2004, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) Sanne  has been active in the field of olfaction. She has worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Monell Chemical Senses Center (USA), the world’s premier institute devoted to multidisciplinary research on the senses of smell and taste. She has expanded her research into eating behavior since 2010, when she started working at the division of Human Nutrition, Wageningen University, in the chair group Sensory Science and Eating Behavior. In 2011, she was awarded with a prestigious NWO-Veni grant, to investigate the behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms of odor-induced food cue reactivity. In 2018 she received an NWO-Aspasia grant for female research talents, as well as the AChemS Barry Jacobs Memorial Award for Research in the Psychophysics of Human Taste and Smell.

She is an active member of several chemosensory and nutritional organisations (AChemS, Pangborn), and co-founder of the Women In Olfactory Science (WIOS), and Netherlands Olfactory Science Exchange (NOSE) networks.

Her group focusses on chemosensory signals, and how they interact with metabolic and cognitive factors, to decide If, What, and How much we eat. I combine behavioral, neurobiological and physiological measurements to unravel the key question of ‘why do we (over)eat?’. Within this framework, she works on two major research lines: I) the influence of odors on appetite regulation; II) chemosensory changesin clinical populations. By gaining insight in the functionality of chemosensory signals for human eating behavior, in health and disease, we can contribute to changing current eating behavior towards healthier and more rewarding food patterns, and improve quality of life.

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