Penn State student turns passions into accolades in fragrance industry

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — As an international perfumer and senior majoring in materials science and engineering at Penn State, Tianyou Lou sees parallels between the two disciplines. After all, the creation of both fragrances and materials are traced back to producing a specific thing with unique and tailored properties using a nearly infinite number of source materials.

That’s what Lou loves about each.

"Studying materials science at Penn State actually taught me a lot about the analysis techniques used," Lou said. "It's a lot like perfumery. We put different ingredients together, we analyze and then we figure out what's in there. Or we figure out what we want to make. And then we formulate, and then we figure out the best way to produce it."

The professionally trained perfumer who spent the past eight years perfecting his craft loves working with infinite possibilities. In China, he grew up learning from a family member who created incense and later trained under a French perfumer who works for a large perfumery house.

It’s a process that takes years. Lou first learned to distinguish similar scents and the details of each. It’s not just about the process of making a fragrance people love, he said. A perfumer needs to know things like the safe quantities of each ingredient for human use and the cost of each scent. Some ingredients are derived from things like roses and saffron, which, in concentrated form, can be cost prohibitive even for fragrances that can cost hundreds of dollars.

Lou learned how to build bases and classic fragrances before moving on to his own formulations.

“This part is all about creativity,” Lou said. “It’s what I call the playground. We have almost no regulatory rules when making room fragrances, and we just try it. And after that, we then learn what kind of structure perfume should have, or existing perfume always follows.”

Just like creating materials, Lou spent countless hours creating his own formulas. He counts more than 300 less-than-perfect attempts still housed in his two-story studio in China.

But in those failures, he found success: the fragrance "Divined."

To craft Divined, Lou said he drew from the more "unseemly" sights and smells of New York City. Notes include tortoise fruit, candied apricot, rose and jasmine.

That fragrance became an Artisan Award finalist at the 2022 Art and Olfactory awards, among the top honors for artisan perfumers. After gaining a following in China, amassing more than 20,000 followers on social media, Lou’s company, Mobius Fragrances, started gaining traction globally. He began Mobius — a nod to a 3D shape with just one side — with two business partners while taking a gap year at Penn State. To date, he struggles to keep up with demand.

After graduating from the University, Lou wants to pursue an advanced degree in either materials science or computer science. He’ll still continue creating fragrances and said he sees ways to enhance the industry.

For example, materials experts at Penn State rely on computation and supercomputing to design formulas for materials with unique and desired properties before they’re even created. Because perfume ingredients can be so costly, Lou said he thinks the same methods can be used in the industry. The same is true for creating synthetic scents that mirror some of those costly ingredients, a process that’s accomplished — through trial and error — already in the industry.

“I want to be able to put these two passions together,” Lou said. “I want to use what I learned at Penn State to figure out if there is a better way to do things, because both material and perfumery are quite traditional industries that can be improved through digital technologies.”