Ph.D. student develops next-gen electronic nose

Each year about 49 million Americans experience food-borne illnesses, resulting in 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths. But what if every refrigerator came equipped with an electronic nose that could sniff out spoilage, contamination and unsafe compounds in our food?

Now, Berkeley engineer Carla Bassil may be one step closer to making this a reality.

A Ph.D. student in electrical engineering and computer sciences (EECS), Bassil is developing multi-modal gas sensing technologies for food safety, human health and environmental monitoring. Her presentation on her latest concept — a machine learning-assisted gas sensor chip designed to improve food safety — earned her first place at this year’s UC Berkeley Grad Slam, followed by a second-place finish at the UC systemwide competition.

For Bassil, a young researcher and aspiring entrepreneur, the Grad Slam experience was both validating and inspiring. “A Ph.D. really is a marathon. You can go a very long time — in my case, three years — without visibility on your work or feeling like you’ve accomplished much,” she said. “To see that business leaders and the community recognize that my research is impactful and exciting helps strengthen my motivation. It serves as a reminder of why I’m doing this: to improve people’s lives through this technology.”

Helping people has long been an important goal for Bassil. Growing up, she wanted to pursue a career in healthcare and considered becoming a doctor. She soon realized, however, that the clinical setting wasn’t the right fit for her and pivoted to engineering.

“Engineering combines my love for science and problem solving, but it also offers another way that I can help people: by creating technology-based solutions,” said Bassil. “I’m driven by the idea that my work could positively impact people’s day-to-day lives.”

UC Berkeley’s Carla Bassil won second place at the 2026 UC systemwide Grad Slam competition. (Photo by Robert Durell/University of California)

Bassil became interested in biosensors while studying biomedical engineering as an undergraduate student at Texas A&M University. She enjoyed the challenge of designing devices to meet both human usability and technical requirements. After earning her master’s in business, Bassil headed to Berkeley to pursue her Ph.D. and further explore this technology.

“Berkeley stood out to me because of all the bio-EE work going on here,” said Bassil. “We have professors Rikky Muller, Ana Claudia Arias, Liwei Lin and, of course, my advisor, professor Ali Javey. There’s a plethora of research at Berkeley that combines the bio aspect with electrical engineering, and I wanted to work at the crux of that.”

Bassil was also drawn to the sense of inclusivity she felt on campus. “When comparing other schools, I was struck by the representation of women in the Berkeley EECS Ph.D. program,” she said. “I think that reflects the department’s commitment to attract top talent while fostering an inclusive and supportive environment.”

When Bassil started at Berkeley, biosensor technology had already made some significant strides. Sensors that monitor sweat or interstitial fluid, like patches that track glucose levels in our blood, were either commercially available or headed in that direction.

Bassil, however, was interested in the electronic nose, or e-nose, a gas sensor concept that emerged in the 1980s. Rather than targeting a single gas, like a carbon monoxide detector, it uses a multiplexing gas sensing technology. By combining the information from an array of sensors and their relative responses to create a “gas fingerprint,” the e-nose can help identify a scent, not just the compounds in the scent.

According to Bassil, the e-nose also offers a non-invasive way to monitor “the next untapped area” of biometrics: our scent. She imagines someday using this sensing technology to better understand the human body, just as dogs are trained to detect a change in their owner’s scent and remind them to take medication.

For now, though, Bassil is focusing on food safety. While gas sensors are currently used for this purpose in some industrial settings, Bassil is integrating machine learning algorithms with her chips to enhance the sensors’ accuracy and specificity, which could lead to faster and more reliable food safety screening at scale. Bassil said she could see this sensing technology being packaged as a plug-in device on a smartphone, so people can check their food for allergens while on the go.

“Machine learning has proved to be a game changer for sensor technology, thanks to advances in pattern recognition capabilities and greater ease of use,” said Bassil. “And what’s exciting is that you can train the e-nose on your choice of objects, so you can potentially design sensors tailored to any application.”

Bassil hopes to someday spin out her biosensor research into a commercial product. In the meantime, she credits the Bakar Fellows and Kavli Discovery Fellows programs with helping to develop her communication and leadership skills, soft skills that she considers “complementary to the hard science skills we need in our Ph.D.”

This summer, Bassil will participate in the NSF I-Corps, a customer discovery program in which she will be able to analyze different markets where her technology may be applicable. Based on that data, she can then determine the best commercial direction.

“I have only two more years left in my Ph.D. program, but I still have a lot of work to do,” said Bassil. “Hopefully, when I leave Berkeley, I’ll have a technology that is mature and ready for commercialization.”

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