Profile

I enjoy meteoritic research “not because they are easy, but because they are hard”. My research allows me to utilise rare skills to unfold mysteries about outer space objects, and to look back in time to understand what it was like at the birth of our solar system. I also love to be involved in space missions, crushing and powdering materials brought back to Earth from foreign worlds, let it be the Moon, an asteroid, a comet, the planet Mars.

Other than playing with my children (and yes that’s a hobby too), I enjoy exploring different board games with friends and family. I also like watching anime, and I learned many interesting Japanese words from that. And Lego, I bought Lego for my kids so I can play.

I am a lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway University of London. I study how life’s simple building blocks are turned into increasingly complex molecules that ultimately yield life. It is difficult to refine the scope of my research into a single discipline, so I describe myself as a meteoriticist, planetary scientist, astrobiologist, cosmochemist, depending on the occasion. As my research involves the study of extraterrestrial organic matter, most of my research time is spent on being a germophobe – I am very wary of keeping my lab space spotless, and being extremely critical at identifying extraterrestrial matter from terrestrial contamination. I also study tiny space dust and extraterrestrial samples returned to Earth by space missions.