Our roundtables are designed for deep, human-centered conversation—not presentations. Expert moderators host each track, and each session lasts 2 hours. You’ll join fellow guests "around the table" to explore, discuss, and talk through (debate?!) the topic of interest together.
- Curated Conversations – Each room hosts a deep, focused discussion.
- Small Groups – Sit where your curiosity leads you.
- Expert Moderators – Each track has a guide to keep the dialogue rich and inclusive.
This format fosters:
- Shared insight
- Equal voices
- Real collaboration
- Big ideas in an intimate format
Choose the track that resonates with your curiosity, expertise, or passion.
Speak. Listen. Build ideas. The magic happens in the mix:
THINK TANK: HEALTH & EQUITY
Led by Joshua M. Levy, M.D., M.P.H., M.S.
+ GROUP THINK:
- Sense & Care – Reimagining health through sensory access
- Invisible No More – Advocacy and the sensory justice, challenges including education and reimbursement
- #DeliciousForAll – Dignity, access, neuro x food science, technology, and inclusive design
DREAM CHAMBER: CULTURE & RITUAL
Scent & Taste as Identity & Ritual: Why Do We Like What We Like?
In this interactive session, we invite participants to explore how personal histories, social forces, and marketing intertwine to form our sensory identities. Through storytelling, reflection, and group exercises, we’ll ask: are our preferences born of nature, nurture, or both? Together we’ll map the tastes and smells that define us today—and speculate on what we’ll be drinking and wearing tomorrow.
+ GROUP THINK:
- Eat, Feel, Glow – Wellness through fragrance, flavor, and belonging
- Ritual Reboot – Redesigning the moments that matter
- The Future of Wellness – Cultural fluency, pleasure, and access
LUNCH & NETWORKING
INNOVATION LAB: INNOVATION, HEALTH TECH & METRICS
Led by Paule Joseph CRNP, Ph.D.
WORKSHOP - TUNING FUTURES, WITH SCENT with Caroline McMillan
What will tomorrow’s wearables smell, taste, feel, look, and sound like? This immersive workshop invites participants to explore scent as a design medium, investigating how we might develop emerging technologies, appropriate systems, and interactions for scent, or taste-based interfaces. Beginning with a short presentation on digital olfaction devices.
Guided by a curated bar of essences, participants collectively tune into the atmospherics of terrestrial and extraterrestrial spaces through speculative, performative, and bodying design methods, participants will capture scenarios and world-building to adapt different meanings into sensory-driven futures.
A nose-first dive into imagining novel prototype concepts that embody new forms, feelings, and dialects for wearables design.
Kyle Palmer Chief Science Officer, Opertech Bio will talk about the development of The TāStation®, an automated rapid throughput taste testing system—a human machine interface that enables sensory discrimination.
+ GROUP THINK:
- Sensorial Intelligence – New benchmarks in product, policy, and care
- Behavioral Economics of Taste & Smell – How sensory input drives decisions. Explore how this impacts culture, ROI, society, and sustainability
- Taste our planet. Smell our world. – Regenerative eating, sustainability, and sensory behavior
THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE: PERFORMANCE, RECOVERY & THERAPEUTICS
Lead by: Alissa Nolden, Ph.D.
Workshops by:
+ GROUP THINK:
- Eat to Heal, Eat to Feel – “Food as Medicine”, Strategies for cognition and performance. Special attention to food for eldercare, performance enhancement, celiac, post-chemo, GLP-1 and people with special dietary needs.
- The Next Bite – Future rituals around functional products, prevention, regeneration, and longevity
- From Lab to Life – Accelerating impact through translational R&D. UPF, future food design, etc.
- LAST CALL with Alex Highsmith: Zero-proof & functional beverage tasting & trends
- Guinep recovery cocktail tasting experience
- Wrap-up reflection by WTSA & all guests
- Closing bites, coffee service, and final showcase interactions
