In this paper, we present how the achievements related to NEUROCHEM project (FP7, Bio-ICT, Grant number 216916) have increased the understanding of the olfactory system and helped to develop novel computing architectures and models for chemical sensing. We present the developed computational models of the olfactory pathway of vertebrates and insects to capture the mechanisms that underlie their chemical information processing abilities. To mimic the biological olfactory epithelium a large scale chemical sensor array has been developed. We also present a robot that demonstrates the chemical search task as a direct application of the computing paradigms extracted.