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
Planetary Science; Cosmochemistry; Meteoritics; Astrobiology; Organic geochemistry
I am a planetary scientist and also a senior lecturer at Royal Holloway University of London. My research aims at understanding the earliest chemical reactions involving liquid water in the solar system, and how these processes turned life’s simple building blocks into increasingly complex molecules that ultimately yielded life. My work focuses on astromaterials–meteorites, micrometeorites and interplanetary dust particles–which are derived from carbonaceous asteroids that accreted organic and volatile components at the birth of our solar system. I lead coordinated international efforts to characterise the abundance, distribution, and isotopic signatures of extraterrestrial organic compounds and water, with the use of cutting-edge technology with extreme precision and sensitivity, including the synchrotron light source. Being a member of the UK Fireball Alliance, we aim to recover freshly-fallen meteorites, an example of this is the recent recovery of the Winchcombe meteorite. I lead a consortium of the UK’s leading specialists in evaluating its primitive organic composition. I was on the science team for JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission, which returned pristine samples from a carbonaceous asteroid–Ryugu. Our team addresses the role of asteroidal processes in the evolution of Ryugu with a focus on its mineralogy.