The next RED School will be March 15-21, 2026
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
homochirality; interstellar ices, meteorites, chiroptical spectroscopy
Cornelia (“Conny”) Meinert studied chemistry and environmental sciences in Germany and earned her PhD at the University of Halle-Wittenberg in collaboration with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig (2011). She first came to Nice for what was supposed to be a one-year postdoc… and never left. After all, who could trade the Mediterranean sun for German winters? With a CNES fellowship and a CNRS position secured in 2013 at the Institute of Chemistry of Nice, Conny turned her “short stay” into a permanent one. Her research tackles one of science’s greatest puzzles: why life on Earth chose molecules of only one handedness — a phenomenon called biological homochirality. To unravel its origin, her team develops analytical and spectroscopic tools, working closely with physicists at synchrotron ASTRID2 in Denmark. By recreating interstellar chemistry in the lab and exploring molecular asymmetry, her work sheds light on how life’s first chiral building blocks may have taken shape.