ECRO activities comprise scientific meetings, summer schools, and PhD courses. Individual travel grants are available for early career researchers (postdocs and PhD students) to facilitate their participation at scientific meetings organized by the chemosensory community. ECRO encourages its members to organize minisymposia or workshops on specific research topics or technical aspects to exchange scientific information or technical know-how among its members.

• Current and upcoming meetings can be found in the tab Meetings.
• ECRO Conferences
• Summer Schools and other activities are announced on the Home Page.

• Abstract Submission Guidelines

ICOT (International Commission on Olfaction and Taste)

To this writer it is not totally clear if there were two different ICOT commissions or if the ICOT established as a commission in 1970 of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS) was the original committee that developed to be the committee overseeing the contact between the various olfactory and taste societies.

Nowadays, our ICOT is a committee made up by 2-3 members of the major chemosensory research communities: in Europe (European Chemoreception Research Organization; ECRO), Japan (The Japanese Association for the Study of Taste and Smell; JASTS), and North America (Association for Chemoreception Sciences;  AChemS). There are currently other smaller chemosensory communities in Korea and Australia, that used to take part in ICOT via an extra member invitation or by being part of one of the areas bigger societies. Within ICOT, JAST, AChemS and ECRO have agreed to monetary sponsor the International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste (ISOT) to start organizing the international meeting. The meeting rotates every 4 years between sites in Europe, Japan, and the USA. At the ISOT meeting scientist of all the continents discuss the latest chemosensory research. 

2022 members:

JASTS: 

Kazushige Touhara (The University of Tokyo)
Yoko Ogiwara (Ajinomoto Co., Inc)
Noriatsu Shigemura (Kyushu University)
Takaki Miwa (Kanazawa Medical University)

AChemS:

Tom E. Finger (University of Colorado, USA)

Charles Greer (Yale University, USA)

ECRO:

President (Thomas Hummel, University of Dresden, Germany)

President-elect (Loic Briand, INRAE, Univ. de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, France)

President-past (Trese Leinders-Zufall, Saarland University, CIPMM, Germany)

ISOT – The International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste

The  International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste, or shortly “ISOT”, convenes every four years and unites the chemosensory research communities in Europe (European Chemoreception Research Organization; ECRO), Japan (The Japanese Association for the Study of Taste and Smell; JASTS), and North America (Association for Chemoreception Sciences;  AChemS). The Australasian Association for Chemosensory Science (AACSS) has been very active in the past. The first ISOT meeting was held in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1962 under direction of Ynge Zotterman. 

The organizing society chooses the program chair(s). Next to the choices of the ISOT program chair(s), the organizing/program committee will often contain 1-2 members of the other societies.

A nice synopsis of ISOT and the various meetings was published in Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1170: 1-4 in 2009 by Thomas Finger (University of Colorado, USA).

ISOT meetings over the years:

ECRO2019 in Trieste, Italy - thank you to the great organisation and the photographers at the meeting.