Cornelia Meinert

I am a CNRS Research Director at the Institut de Chimie de Nice, Université Côte d’Azur, France. As an external collaborator within InterCat, I contribute to research addressing the origin of biological homochirality—one of the fundamental questions surrounding the emergence of life.

I obtained my PhD (2011) in Environmental and Analytical Chemistry from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, in collaboration with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany. After completing postdoctoral research in Nice with a fellowship from the French space agency (CNES), I joined the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the Institut de Chimie de Nice in 2013, turning what was initially intended to be a short stay in France into a permanent one.

Our group investigates one of science’s most enduring puzzles: why life on Earth relies almost exclusively on molecules of a single handedness, a phenomenon known as biological homochirality. We are particularly interested in the formation and detection of chiral molecules in interstellar and planetary environments, as well as the potential role of circularly polarized light in generating molecular asymmetry.

To address these questions, our team develops advanced analytical and chiroptical spectroscopic methods and works closely with synchrotron facilities such as ASTRID2 in Denmark (AU-CD beam line). By recreating interstellar chemistry in the laboratory and probing the resulting molecular asymmetries, we aim to understand how the first chiral building blocks of life may have emerged and how they may have influenced the origin of life.