Your trainers stink — but this prototype rack could cure smelly shoes for good

We all know the smell. That gut-punch of hot, sour air that hits when you take your shoes off after a long day. Maybe you try to ignore it. Maybe you pretend it’s not your fault. Maybe you stick your trainers on the shoe rack, walk away, and hope for divine intervention. Whether it's a stylish pair of the best Nike's or some worn-in running shoes, it doesn't matter; they're gonna smell.

Two Indian researchers decided that wasn’t good enough.

Design professor Vikash Kumar and his former student Sarthak Mittal weren’t setting out to solve the global footwear stank crisis. Originally, they just wanted to build a sleeker, more practical shoe rack for university students. But when they started asking questions around campus, something weirdly obvious emerged: the problem wasn’t space. It was the smell.

So they did what any good design team would do: they leaned into it. They surveyed 149 students. The results confirmed what everyone already knows but doesn’t talk about: yes, our shoes stink. Spraying them with deodorant or stuffing them with teabags doesn’t do much either.

It turns out the culprit is a charming little bacterium called Kytococcus sedentarius, which thrives in the warm, sweaty, slightly tragic ecosystem of a well-worn trainer. So the duo built a prototype rack that doesn’t just hold your shoes, it sterilises them too, combating old Kytococcus sedentarius at the same time.

Shining a light on stinky shoes

Using UVC light, they targeted the stinkiest part of a trainer, the toe box, and ran tests on shoes worn by university athletes. In two to three minutes, the smell started to disappear. After six minutes, the odour was gone. Push it to ten and, sure, the bacteria were dead, but the soles started to smell like burnt rubber, so there was clearly a sweetspot.

It worked. The shoes smelled better. The prototype was clever. And then... nothing happened. The project sat on a shelf for a year — until the Ig Nobel Prize committee came calling.

The Ig Nobels are basically the Oscars of oddball science. Organised by the Annals of Improbable Research and co-sponsored by Harvard groups, they exist to celebrate studies that “make people laugh, then think.” Past winners include scientists who taught rats to drive tiny cars, and one man who tracked his thumbnail growth for 35 years.

Now, Kumar and Mittal are officially part of that elite, weird, wonderful club and slightly stunned by the attention. “It’s put a burden on us,” Kumar said. “Now we have to do more research on things people don’t usually think about.”

You can’t buy this odour-slaying shoe rack just yet; it’s still a prototype, but the battle against smelly trainers might finally be turning towards a perfumed win.

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