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Our Institute Management
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Benoît Rousseau, Ph.D.
President
Rie Ishii, Ph.D.
Vice President
Dr. Benoît Rousseau has contributed to the field of sensory and consumer science for over 30 years. He earned a degree in Food Science and Engineering from AgroParisTech in Paris, France, before joining the laboratory of Professor Michael O’Mahony at the University of California, Davis. There, he received the first Ph.D. in Sensory Science awarded by UC Davis’s Department of Food Science and Technology.
He later joined the Institute for Perception, where he spent more than two decades supporting a wide range of client research and education initiatives. His work spanned all aspects of sensory and consumer project execution—from study design and fieldwork to data analysis and reporting. A key focus of his research was the application of Thurstonian modeling to improve the statistical power of sensory methods and enhance the consumer relevance of results from internal panels. These approaches were widely implemented across industrial client projects.
Dr. Rousseau is also a passionate educator. He has delivered more than 100 short courses around the world, including in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and has been an invited speaker at numerous international conferences. He has also held adjunct faculty positions at Chuo University in Japan and The Ohio State University in the United States.
His academic contributions include peer-reviewed publications, books, and white papers on a wide range of topics in sensory and consumer science.
Dr. Rie Ishii has been working in the field of Sensory Science for close to 30 years. Like Prof. O’Mahony, she has spent most of her career at the University of California in Davis, where she ran an established internship training program for undergraduate and graduate students. Many of these students moved on to employments at a variety of domestic and global companies with advanced sensory and consumer research departments.
Dr. Ishii has actively collaborated with Prof. O’Mahony at the UCD. One of their impactful contributions involved cross-cultural studies between Japanese and Americans which resulted in the designation of the ‘Umami’ characteristic as the fifth basic taste rather than wrongly limiting it to the combination of the four ‘original’ basic tastes.
Dr. Ishii’s interests involve conducting sensory and consumer studies using traditional as well as advanced experimental procedures. In particular, she focuses on the development of new descriptive analysis panels going beyond standard laboratory evaluations. For instance, she has employed home-use panels for food and personal care products resulting in more ecologically valid sensory profiles and measurements.
Dr. Ishii left UC Davis to co-found the Davis Sensory Institute with Prof. O’Mahony with the objective of providing faster and more cost-effective services to food, beverage and personal care companies. She has a special interest in sustainability projects. She also maintains her training program for young sensory scientists who are interested in a career in the field of Sensory and Consumer Science.
Our Commitment
To Mentorship and Discovery
The Davis Sensory Institute, LLC, was founded in 2017 by Prof. Michael O'Mahony and Dr. Rie Ishii after leaving academia to apply their sensory science expertise to the consumer goods industry.
Following Prof. O’Mahony’s passing in 2024, Dr. Benoît Rousseau joined DSI and now serves as President. DSI’s mission remains to help consumer goods companies uncover unique, reliable insights through sensory and consumer testing, and to prepare future professionals for successful careers in the field.