"The electronic nose improves the quality of the final product, reduces costs and enables continuous control of the production process, difficult with the techniques of analytical chemistry"

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Fundació Bosch i Gimpera UB, of the ten years of Les Heures and the seventy years of the proclamation of Pere Bosch i Gimpera as rector of the Universitat Autònoma de BarcelonaThere were prizes FGB, which in the form of the best initiative for collaboration between University, business and society in spin-off - innovation and training-material, the award went to the young company eSense Systems, s.l created based on the results of r + d generated within the framework of activities of predoctoral and postdoctoral search run young researchers of the Electronics Department of the University of Barcelona.

eSense Systems, SL is officially created in June 2002. However, the idea was born more than three years and during this period the project eSense won several awards and supports between which can highlight the following:

• Project funded by the Cidem, Trampolins Tecnologics program, 2001
• Award for the best plan of company, Barcelona Activa, 2002
• Second Prize in the contest Emprenedors, 2002-2003
• First prize of the Neti project, 2003

The idea of creating a company was created after developing a team (electronic nose) that was substantially different from the other teams (electronic noses) which can be found in the market and that seemed good enough to us to try to market it and sell it.

In principle, the founding partners of the company are: Dr. Alexandre Perera, Dr. Antonio Pardo and myself, Dr. Teodor Sundic. Lately, in the shareholding of the company entered the Mr. Xavier Cano, a group of private investors, CIC UB (company of the University of Barcelona) and the formalization of the entrance to an investor group which will give financial support is expected during the month of Januarywhich is very necessary at this time.

A spin-off is a company coming out of the University environment and that generally, in large part, is product of the investigation carried out by the founders in the University. I would say that we are a typical company spin-off, created by three researchers from the Department of electronics of the University of Barcelona, with a clear vocation to development of high-tech products focused on the market.

I think that they need more initiatives such as ours (the potential is and there are many people in university environment with good ideas and good projects), but also mechanisms and necessary support so that people can adapt well and quickly to a change so important as it is to move from one area to another. Fundació Bosch i Gimpera and Cidem are two institutions that have helped us much during these three years of life of the project in order to meet a challenge of this kind.

However, the University of Barcelona comes in the shareholding of the company and will be a partner. We consider important and satisfactory that the UB is within given his involvement in the project, more than anything, has been custom in Professor of the Department of electronics, Dr. Santiago framework and the Director of Department of electronics Dr. Josep Samitier, and as I have already mentioned, several people of FBG. We hope that this support also in future remains one of the foundations for r & d of eSense Systems, S.L.

eSense Systems, S.L. has developed and provides for marketing specific electronic noses. Electronic noses, in general, are electronic instruments for analysis of gases, odors and volatile substances. Our goal is to produce some specific kits for different applications which we detail below.

The idea of electronic nose based on trying to imitate the sense of smell of humans, using an array of gas sensors that simulates the receptors in the nose and a signal processing algorithms that try to simulate the functioning of the brain in the efforts to recognize and quantify odors. Anyway, it must recognize that today the reality of electronic noses away enough of the biological system of smell, one of the most complex systems of our body. However, there are several applications where electronic nose (or teams based on arrays of sensors of gas in conjunction with signal processing algorithms) can be a very useful tool and solve different problems as its main feature the smell or the issuance of certain gases.

If he asks me the possible application of electronic noses, I would say that they are countless. I would also say that, today, not all are technologically feasible. eSense Systems, SL. It focuses on a few sectors where our teams can actually be useful and provide benefits to customers, as for example, the food industry sector. The product we are selling at the moment is geared towards quality control of final product and process control in line (for example the quality of oil in the frying process control). Our product provides some clear benefits to manufacturers, which can be summarized in the improvement of the quality of your final product, reducing costs of production and a continuous monitoring of the production process often is not possible with typical techniques of analytical chemistry.

Anyway, it is worth mentioning that the applications in medicine where a first analysis of certain diseases can be analyzing body odors or encouragement of persons being investigated. In the United States is underway in the detection of explosives and gas toxic such as anthrax, etc.

Yes, won it in the category of enterprise spin-off. In fact is the first year that the FBG includes this category at their awards and, as you can imagine, has made us very happy to be the first company awarded in this modality.

If we talk about immediate future, the challenge is to convince customers of the agri-food industry that the product of eSense, still based on a very new technology, they can be very useful and provide some very clear benefits.

And if we talk about a future in the medium and long term, eSense has a clear vocation and it is growing. And grow it means entering other niche markets such as, for example, the environment and the control of the quality of air, is grow geographically and be a company that sells not only Spain but also in Europe and USAmeans be learning along the way and above all enjoy it. And I am sure that we are going to get.