Marina Barcenilla leads a double life. On the one hand, she’s a Perfumer and fragrance educator with almost three decades of experience in the fragrance industry. On the other hand, she’s an astrobiology doctoral researcher with a first-class honours degree in planetary science and astronomy. Her current research focuses on detecting and characterising spectroscopic biosignatures on Mars by working with analogue samples from several locations on Earth. She’s also an active science communicator, a member of the Astrobiology Society of Britain Committee and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Her public engagement and outreach activities involve delivering talks on planetary science, astrobiology, and astronomy to children and adults and producing events for her space science outreach project, AromAtom: Discover the Smell of Space, founded in 2017, and born of her passion for both space and olfaction. Additionally, she designs olfactory science activities for museums, science centres, and other venues.