Meet the researchers behind Hynt’s sleep tech

Research
a stack of ringbound journals

At Hynt, our sleep tech is founded in science and proprietary research. Every aspect of what we do, from the algorithms in our data engine to the scents we select and the physiological outcomes we target, is built on evidence. We didn’t assemble a product first and then validate retrospectively. The science came first.

That is because our team is led by two academics and includes active researchers and published scientists who continue to work at the forefront of sensory science, neuroscience, and human-computer interaction. Our science-led, AI-powered scent technology reflects their combined expertise, and the body of research behind it continues to grow.

To give you a sense of the depth of knowledge behind what we do, here is a selection of publications from members of our team. You can view a more exhaustive list on our Publications page.

Selected research publications from our team

 

Emanuela Maggioni – CEO, CTO & Co-Founder

Emanuela is a prolific researcher in the field of olfactory science, with a publication record spanning over a decade of work on sensory interaction, scent-based experience design, and the crossmodal relationship between smell, emotion, and behaviour.

Her two most recent publications, co-authored with colleagues across multiple institutions, report the results of studies on digital smell training, examining how people engage with and adhere to scent-based digital interventions – and how this can be applied in the medical field of rhinology. This kind of work speaks directly to the core of Hynt’s mission: using precision-targeted scent solutions to create meaningful, measurable outcomes for users.

  • Hsieh, J. W., Dougherty, M., Poulopoulou, A., Blidariu, D., Senn, P., Hopper, R., Patel, D., Maggioni, E., Obrist, M., Vosshall, L.B., Keller, A., & Landis, B. N. (2026). SMELL-RS: A Self-administered, Digital Test for Olfactory Dysfunction that is Rapid, Reliable, and Accurate. Preprint on medRxiv: https://medrxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2026.03.28.26349316v1
  • Beşevli, C., Brianza, G., Dawes, C., Mathur, S., Beganovic, S., Boak, D., Schieck, A., Lechner, M., Maggioni, E., Philpott, C., & Obrist, M. (2026). Digital Intervention for Smell Training: A Real-World Study on Engagement, Adherence, and Behavioural Dynamics. Rhinology Journal. DOI: 10.4193/Rhin25.290
  • Hopper, R., Popa, D., Maggioni, E., Patel, D., Obrist, M., Landis, B. N., Hsieh, J. W. & Udrea, F., (2024). Multi-channel portable odor delivery device for self-administered and rapid smell testing. Communications Engineering, 3(1), 141. DOI: 10.1038/s44172-024-00286-1

 

Marianna Obrist – CSO & Co-Founder

Marianna is a globally recognised authority in human-computer interaction and the co-author of Multisensory Experiences: Where the Senses Meet Technology, published by Oxford University Press in its second edition in 2025. Her work addresses the practical, commercial, and ethical dimensions of designing technology that engages all the senses, not just sight and sound.

Her recent research ranges from sensory-driven micro-interventions for health and wellbeing to investigations of how large language models handle olfactory perception. The breadth of that work reflects the breadth of scent’s potential – and Hynt’s ambition to harness the power of scent for every part of life.

  • Abdalla, Y., Gatti, E., Orlu, M., & Obrist, M. (2025). Sensory-driven micro-interventions for improved health and wellbeing. Digital Health, 11. DOI: 10.1177/ 20552076251408522
  • Philpott, C. M., Hummel, T., Parma, V., Lechner, M., Boak, D., & Obrist, M. (2025). The Need to Promote Olfactory Health in Public Health Agendas Across the Globe. Clinical Otolaryngology, Nov 24. DOI: 0.1111/coa.70056
  • Beşevli, C., Marques, A., Brianza, G., Dawes, C., & Obrist, M. (2025). Flipping Perspectives: Visualising Digital Smell Training. Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2006–2018. DOI: 10.1145/3715336.3735425

 

Elena Calzolari – Researcher in Cognitive Neuroscience

Elena brings deep expertise in neuroscience and human perception to the Hynt team – precisely the kind of foundational scientific knowledge that underpins a technology designed to influence the physiological processes related to sleep. Her published research spans vestibular processing, spatial cognition, and the neuroscience of sensory adaptation: the study of how the brain updates its model of the world in response to new information.

  • Hadi, Z., Mahmud, M., Calzolari, E., Chepisheva, M., Zimmerman, K. A., Tahtis, V., Smith, R. M., Rust, H. M., Sharp, D. J. & Seemungal, B. M. (2025). Balance recovery and its link to vestibular agnosia in traumatic brain injury: a longitudinal behavioural and neuro-imaging study. Journal of Neurology, 272(2), 132. DOI: 10.1007/s00415-024-12876-2
  • Hadi, Z., Mahmud, M., Pondeca, Y., Calzolari, E., Chepisheva, M., Smith, R. M., Rust, H. M., Sharp, D. J. & Seemungal, B. M. (2022). The human brain networks mediating the vestibular sensation of self-motion. Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 443, 120458. DOI: 10.1016/j.jns.2022.120458
  • Albini, F., Pisoni, A., Salvatore, A., Calzolari, E., Casati, C., Marzoli, S. B., Falini, A., Crespi, S. A., Godi, C., Castellano, A., Bolognini, N. & Vallar, G. (2022). Aftereffects to Prism Exposure without Adaptation: A Single Case Study. Brain Sciences, 12(4), 480. DOI: 10.3390/brainsci12040480

 

Christopher Dawes – Researcher & UKRI Future Leaders Fellow

Chris is an experimental psychologist and the recipient of a prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship for his ScentPlay research programme. Running from 2025 to 2029, ScentPlay explores how integrating scent and playful interactions within digital experiences can enhance sleep health, digital wellbeing, and immersive entertainment – making it a very closely aligned external research programme to Hynt’s own work.

  • Beşevli, C., Marques, A., Brianza, G., Dawes, C., & Obrist, M. (2025). Flipping Perspectives: Visualising Digital Smell Training. Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2006–2018. DOI: 10.1145/3715336.3735425
  • Zhong, S., Zhou, Z., Dawes, C., Brianza, G., & Obrist, M. (2024). Sniff AI: Is My ‘Spicy’ Your ‘Spicy’? Exploring LLM’s Perceptual Alignment with Human Smell Experiences. arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.06950
  • Dawes, C., Xue, J., Brianza, G., Cornelio, P., Montano Murillo, R., Maggioni, E., & Obrist, M. (2024). ScentHaptics: Augmenting the Haptic Experiences of Digital Mid-Air Textiles with Scent. In Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 47-56. DOI: 10.1145/3678957.3685715

 

Fahad Zia – AI / ML Lead

Fahad leads the machine learning and AI development that sits at the core of the Hynt data engine. The system he is developing combines application-specific databases with AI-driven learning algorithms to process real-time sensor data and personalise our scent delivery in response.

  • Zia, M. F., & Kalidass, S. H. (2024). Web Phishing Net (WPN): A scalable machine learning approach for real-time phishing campaign detection. Intelligent Cybersecurity Conference (ICSC) (pp. 206–213). IEEE
  • Zia, M. F., Kalidass, S. H., & Roscoe, J. F. (2023). SANTA: Semi-supervised adversarial network threat and anomaly detection system. Artificial Intelligence XL: SGAI 2023 (pp. 335–349). Springer

 

Richard Hopper – Senior Hardware Engineer

Richard is the engineer behind the physical delivery system that makes Hynt’s precision-targeted scent technology work. Our proprietary hardware is designed to deliver multiple scents simultaneously and combine them in the air – a technically demanding challenge that Richard’s deep background in MEMS sensors, CMOS microhotplate technology, and portable gas-sensing devices makes him uniquely qualified to solve.

  • Hsieh, J. W., Dougherty, M., Poulopoulou, A., Blidariu, D., Senn, P., Hopper, R., Patel, D., Maggioni, E., Obrist, M., Vosshall, L.B., Keller, A., & Landis, B. N. (2026). SMELL-RS: A Self-administered, Digital Test for Olfactory Dysfunction that is Rapid, Reliable, and Accurate. Preprint on medRxiv: https://medrxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2026.03.28.26349316v1
  • Hopper, R., Popa, D., Maggioni, E., et al. Patel, D., Obrist, M., Landis, B. N., Hsieh, J. W. & Udrea, F., (2024). Multi-channel portable odor delivery device for self-administered and rapid smell testing. Communications Engineering, 3(1), 141. DOI: 10.1038/s44172-024-00286-1
  • Hopper, R., Popa, D., Udrea, F., Ali, S. Z., & Stanley-Marbell, P. (2022). Miniaturized thermal acoustic gas sensor based on a CMOS microhotplate and MEMS microphone. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1–6. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-05613-0

 

This is only a selection. A more exhaustive list of publications for each team member is available on our Publications page. And because research is our passion, the list continues to grow. For more information on Hynt’s work and our team’s research, contact us.

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