The next RED School will be March 14-20, 2027
Discover the school program and apply
Here’s the team of teachers in charge of this year’s courses, with whom you’ll have the opportunity to interact
Organic chemistry in the small bodies of the solar system, Prebiotic chemistry
Hervé Cottin is a professor at the University of Paris-Est-Créteil (UPEC) where he teaches chemistry and astronomy. He carries out research at the Interuniversity Laboratory of Atmospheric Systems (LISA). He is president of the Astrobiology Commission of the IAU and former president of the French Astrobiology Society. His research work is mainly devoted to the study of the origin and evolution of cometary organic matter. He works to understand the extent to which comets could have contributed to the origin of life on Earth and what their composition tells us about the formation of the Solar System. His work is based on laboratory experiments and measurements made by the Rosetta space mission. They are complemented by studies in Earth orbit outside the International Space Station. Hervé Cottin contributed to the detection of glycine (the simplest of amino acids) and organic macromolecules in comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. He is also part of the scientific team of the MOMA (Mars Organic Molecule Analyser) instrument, which objective will be to search for organic matter at the surface of Mars thanks to the Rosalind Franklin rover of the European ExoMars mission.