I mean, when it’s your profession, sometimes you can turn it off and turn it back on (laughs). I will put my nose into everything and anywhere, even the rottenest fish in the world. I consider myself to be extremely tolerant, and I think my immune system is the strongest on the planet. I don’t have any prejudices when it comes to smells. When I smell something, I think about its chemical composition and will immediately think of ways to reproduce it.

— Smell artist Sissel Tolaas on her sense of smell. Read more at 5 Minutes With… Olfactory Artist Sissel Tolaas at Singapore Tatler.

Move aside, Chanel No. 5. Scientists have now created a scent that’s even older than the iconic perfume, even if it only just wafted into human nostrils for the first time in more than 100 years.

That’s because the piney, earthy perfume derives its fragrance compounds from a Hawaiian hibiscus flower that vanished from the dryland forests of Maui in the early-1910s.

— With some help from Sissel Tolaas, the folks at Ginkgo BioWorks make a "de-extincted hibiscus perfume". Read more Jurassic Park for Perfume: Ginkgo Bioworks Reconstructs Scents From Extinct Plants at IEEE Spectrum.

Literally, in that she invented a lexicon called Nasalo with more than 2,500 terms -- like "clesh" for clean sea and "ino," which is like cleaned asphalt and stones. But also metaphorically, in that she has the highly trained snout, chemical knowledge and technological tool kit to perceive it.

— From a long piece on smell artist Sissel Tolaas at Engadget. Read more at On the nose: Sissel Tolaas is a star in the world of smells.