Mission & History

AChemS, the Association for Chemoreception Sciences, is a scientific research organization dedicated to understanding the “chemical senses” of smell, taste, trigeminal irritation and internal chemoreception from the fundamentals of neurobiology to complex behavior.

The Association for Chemoreception Sciences (AChemS) seeks:

(a) to advance the understanding of chemosensory mechanisms by bringing to one forum the variety of different scientific disciplines currently being used to approach the chemical senses;

(b) to encourage basic, clinical, and applied research in the chemical senses;

(c) to promote an appreciation, beyond the chemosensory community itself, of the need and impact of chemosensory research;

(d) to act as an identifiable organ representing the interests of the chemosensory research community; and

(e) to act as an identifiable directory for those requiring particular types of chemosensory expertise. The Association holds an annual spring meeting and sponsors the journal, Chemical Senses, published bi-monthly by Oxford University Press.

Aided by a planning grant from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Maxwell M. Mozell (SUNY Health Sciences Center, Syracuse) and a group of ten colleagues in the chemical senses met in 1978 to initiate the formation of the Association and plan its first meeting. The first meeting of the Association was held in Sarasota, Florida in April, 1979 and every year thereafter until 2010 when the meeting was moved to a larger venue to accommodate a higher volume of meeting attendees and poster presentations. The Sarasota site and the design of the meeting was modeled after the successful vision meetings of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). From modest beginnings, AChemS has grown to become the professional society for olfaction and taste research in the United States. The annual meeting has evolved into the nation's major forum for presenting advances in chemical senses research.