MIT EECS & CSAIL

Perceptual Engineering Lab

About the Lab

The Perceptual Engineering Lab is led by Assistant Professor Jas Brooks at MIT, jointly affiliated with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

We envision a future where people can adjust their senses as easily as they tweak their phone settings: reducing sweetness perception to discourage unhealthy eating, tweaking perceived temperature for comfort, or extending their sensory range to detect otherwise imperceptible hazards. Despite this potential, today's interfaces struggle to incorporate the "lower" senses (e.g., smell, taste, temperature, interoception) due to persistent challenges in power efficiency, miniaturization, and sensory selectivity. We address these barriers through perceptual engineering: the design of computational interfaces that sense and modulate human sensory perception. We build systems that deliver stimulation (e.g., thermal, chemical, electrical) paired with computational models that read physiological signals to decode and modify what the body perceives.

But perception doesn't only happen in the lab. We also study how the lower senses shape and support everyday experience (in health, aesthetics, and media), treating them as expressive and cognitive tools in their own right. These threads are mutually reinforcing: understanding how the senses operate in everyday life makes our engineered interfaces more meaningful, and advances in modulation open new questions about perception itself. Both draw on computer science, electrical engineering, neuroscience, and design toward a shared goal: giving people genuine, programmable agency over their own perception to help with their wellbeing.

Location

Ray and Maria Stata Center
32 Vassar St
Room 321
Cambridge, MA 02139

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Team

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Principal Investigator

Postdoc

PhD Student

Master's Student

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News

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Apr 27, 2026

Prof. Brooks at Lund University for the AI Lund fika-to-fika on perceptual engineering. Thanks Prof. Emma Söderberg, Prof. Amir Aminifar, Peng Kuang, and Baichuan Huang! Read more

Apr 24, 2026

Prof. Brooks at Malmö University for a week in collaboration with Prof. Simon Niedenthal, including a talk to the K3 Scent Club.

Apr 10, 2026

Congratulations to Gene, Alex, Sol, and Yuting on their fellowship awards!

Apr 9, 2026

Congratulations to Dr. Mack Harnett and Dr. Tai Le on their postdoctoral fellowship awards!

Selected Publications

All publications

Bump chart showing how the top 10 most common scents in scratch-and-sniff books shift in rank across six age groups, from infancy (0–3) through adulthood (18+). Chocolate, mint, and strawberry dominate early childhood, while pine rises to the top rank in adulthood. Socially transgressive and complex scents such as gas, breath, grave, and foot appear only in the adolescence and adulthood categories.

How Scratch-and-Sniff Books Encode Smell Across Development

Jas Brooks, Natalia Kucirkova, Charles Spence

Multisensory Research — 2025

PDF DOI

@article{brooksHowScratchandSniffBooks2025,
  title = {How Scratch-and-Sniff Books Encode Smell Across Development},
  author = {Brooks, Jas and Kucirkova, Natalia and Spence, Charles},
  year = 2025,
  month = nov,
  journal = {Multisensory Research},
  volume = {38},
  number = {6-8},
  pages = {543--585},
  issn = {2213-4794, 2213-4808},
  doi = {10.1163/22134808-bja10176},
  copyright = {https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/}
}

Research figure showing a nose-worn device that uses Peltier elements to heat or cool airflow in sync with breathing. The main image shows the device worn under the nose with a close-up inset of the Peltier component. Two side panels show the contrasting effects: cooling makes breathing feel easy (paired with a crisp mountain environment), while heating makes breathing feel labored (paired with a smoky, hazy scene).

Augmented Breathing via Thermal Feedback in the Nose

Jas Brooks, Alex Mazursky, Janice Hixon, Pedro Lopes

ACM UIST — 2024

PDF DOI Video

@inproceedings{brooksAugmentedBreathingThermal2024,
  title = {Augmented Breathing via Thermal Feedback in the Nose},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 37th {{Annual ACM Symposium}} on {{User Interface Software}} and {{Technology}}},
  author = {Brooks, Jas and Mazursky, Alex and Hixon, Janice and Lopes, Pedro},
  year = 2024,
  month = oct,
  pages = {1--11},
  publisher = {ACM},
  address = {Pittsburgh, PA, USA},
  doi = {10.1145/3654777.3676438},
  isbn = {979-8-4007-0628-8},
  langid = {english}
}

Research figure showing a person wearing a VR headset and holding a blackberry up to their mouth, with a small tube attached near their lips. Illustrated arrows show taste retargeting: the blackberry maps to a lemon, the lemon to a strawberry, and the strawberry to a spider, depicting how the system alters taste perception.

Jury’s Best Demo Honorable Mention

Taste Retargeting via Chemical Taste Modulators

Jas Brooks, Noor Amin, Pedro Lopes

ACM UIST — 2023

PDF DOI Video Code

@inproceedings{brooksTasteRetargetingChemical2023a,
  title = {Taste Retargeting via Chemical Taste Modulators},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 36th {{Annual ACM Symposium}} on {{User Interface Software}} and {{Technology}}},
  author = {Brooks, Jas and Amin, Noor and Lopes, Pedro},
  year = 2023,
  month = oct,
  pages = {1--15},
  publisher = {ACM},
  address = {San Francisco, CA, USA},
  doi = {10.1145/3586183.3606818},
  isbn = {979-8-4007-0132-0},
  langid = {english}
}

Photo of a laser-cut cardboard prototype device with two cylindrical scent cartridges mounted in a flat base, alongside a separate star-shaped stand. Below the device, a strip of colorful scented washi tape is shown with annotations indicating play direction (left to right) and the use of non-scented washi tape to connect segments. The paper tape includes scratch-and-sniff stickers to prototype olfactory experiences, which are scratched by velcro in the cardboard cassette.

Sadakichi Award (Art & Olfaction 2024)

Smell & Paste: Low-Fidelity Prototyping for Olfactory Experiences

Jas Brooks, Pedro Lopes

ACM CHI — 2023

PDF DOI Video Code

@inproceedings{brooksSmellPasteLowFidelity2023,
  title = {Smell \& {{Paste}}: Low-Fidelity Prototyping for Olfactory Experiences},
  shorttitle = {Smell \& {{Paste}}},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2023 {{CHI Conference}} on {{Human Factors}} in {{Computing Systems}}},
  author = {Brooks, Jas and Lopes, Pedro},
  year = 2023,
  month = apr,
  pages = {1--16},
  publisher = {ACM},
  address = {Hamburg, Germany},
  doi = {10.1145/3544548.3580680},
  isbn = {978-1-4503-9421-5},
  langid = {english}
}

Research figure showing a person wearing a VR headset with a wearable patch on their forearm. Four circular insets illustrate chemical haptic sensations delivered via the patch: cooling (menthol), warming (capsaicin), tingling (sanshool), stinging (cinnamaldehyde), and numbing (lidocaine), each paired with a corresponding VR scene.

Chemical Haptics: Rendering Haptic Sensations via Topical Stimulants

Jasmine Lu, Ziwei Liu, Jas Brooks, Pedro Lopes

ACM UIST — 2021

PDF DOI Video Code

@inproceedings{luChemicalHapticsRendering2021,
  title = {Chemical Haptics: Rendering Haptic Sensations via Topical Stimulants},
  shorttitle = {Chemical {{Haptics}}},
  booktitle = {The 34th {{Annual ACM Symposium}} on {{User Interface Software}} and {{Technology}}},
  author = {Lu, Jasmine and Liu, Ziwei and Brooks, Jas and Lopes, Pedro},
  year = 2021,
  month = oct,
  pages = {239--257},
  publisher = {ACM},
  address = {Virtual Event},
  doi = {10.1145/3472749.3474747},
  isbn = {978-1-4503-8635-7},
  langid = {english}
}

Research figure showing a person with eyes closed wearing a small electronic device clipped to their nostril, with a lightning bolt icon indicating electrical stimulation. An arrow points from the device toward a stove in the background, indicating the rendered stereo-smell sensation.

Innovation by Design Honorable Mention

Stereo-Smell via Electrical Trigeminal Stimulation

Jas Brooks, Shan-Yuan Teng, Jingxuan Wen, Romain Nith, Jun Nishida, Pedro Lopes

ACM CHI — 2021

PDF DOI Video Code

@inproceedings{brooksStereoSmellElectricalTrigeminal2021a,
  title = {Stereo-Smell via Electrical Trigeminal Stimulation},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2021 {{CHI Conference}} on {{Human Factors}} in {{Computing Systems}}},
  author = {Brooks, Jas and Teng, Shan-Yuan and Wen, Jingxuan and Nith, Romain and Nishida, Jun and Lopes, Pedro},
  year = 2021,
  month = may,
  pages = {1--13},
  publisher = {ACM},
  address = {Yokohama, Japan},
  doi = {10.1145/3411764.3445300},
  isbn = {978-1-4503-8096-6},
  langid = {english}
}

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Workshops, Panels, Symposia

All other contributions

Collage of eight research project images related to perceptual and physiological augmentation. Top row, left to right: (1) an illustration of two people sweating with the text "pitter patter," depicting interoceptive or physiological awareness; (2) a person using a vibrotactile array suit and gamepad in front of a screen showing obstacle detection zones, with vibrotactile feedback indicated; (3) a person wearing a full-back vibrotactile garment while working at a laptop, with audio waveform annotations; (4) a person at a laptop with an air nozzle directed at their nose providing airflow-based feedback, alongside a respiration belt for measuring respiratory rate. Bottom row, left to right: (5) a person in a VR headset holding a blackberry to their mouth, with arrows showing taste retargeting between fruits and a spider; (6) two people interacting, one in a blue NUS-branded polo shirt, appearing to demonstrate a wearable or in-ear device; (7) a person wearing an HTC Vive VR headset with a custom scent-delivery device mounted to it, smiling in hot and cold scenes; (8) a line drawing of a person with musical notes, HR data arrows, and a smartphone, illustrating physiological data sonification.

Workshop

Toward Everyday Perceptual and Physiological Augmentation

Yujie Tao, Tan Gemicioglu, Sam Chin, Bingjian Huang, Jas Brooks, Sean Follmer, Pedro Lopes, Suranga Nanayakkara

ACM UIST — September 2025

Human senses are fundamental to how we interpret and interact with the world. Computing devices such as smart glasses, earbuds,…

Paper DOI Website

Panel

Third Wave or Winter? The Past and Future of Smell in HCI

Jofish Kaye, Marianna Obrist, Judith Amores, Jas Brooks

ACM CHI — April 2023

We responded to the following thought: Scent technology has evolved from its use in 1960s cinema to internet peripherals in…

DOI

Workshop

Smell, Taste, & Temperature Interfaces Workshop (STT23)

Jas Brooks, Alireza Bahremand, Pedro Lopes, Christy Spackman, Judith Amores, Hsin-Ni Ho, Masahiko Inami, Simon Niedenthal

ACM CHI — April 2023

Third iteration of STT as a 1-day workshop at ACM CHI 2023 focused on hands-on demonstrations and sharing of methods…

DOI Website

Workshop

Smell, Taste, & Temperature Interfaces Workshop (STT21)

Jas Brooks, Pedro Lopes, Judith Amores, Emanuela Maggioni, Haruka Matsukura, Marianna Obrist, Roshan Peiris, Nimesha Ranasinghe

ACM CHI — May 2021

Second iteration of STT as a 3-day virtual workshop at ACM CHI 2021 focused on smell, taste, and temperature interfaces…

DOI Website

Symposium

Ada Lovelace Week 2020

Jasmine Lu, Jas Brooks, Yujie Tao, Dasha Shifrina, Zoe Liu, Pedro Lopes

University of Chicago — October 2020

4-day symposium celebrating women and non-binary technologists from art, industry, and academia. Co-organized with Jasmine Lu, Yujie Tao, Dasha Shifrina,…

Website Video

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