Main Focus
I am an analytical chemist with an astrophysics background. My areas of expertise are chirality, mass spectrometry, pyrolysis and chromatography, and I am currently working on optimising the MOMA instrument of the ExoMars mission for the detection of organics in the Martian surface and subsurface.
Curriculum Vitae
Awards:
2024 PhD Thesis award from the French Chemical Society (SCF) Sud-PACA.
2023 PhD Thesis award from the Fondation Université Côte d’Azur.
2023 Audience Award at the French national final of the 3-Minute Thesis competition
Roles in Space Missions:
Co-I: MOMA on ExoMars
Education and Employment:
2023-ongoing: Postdoctoral researcher, MPS, Göttingen
2020-2023: PhD at the Nice Chemistry Institute
2018-2020: MSc in Astrophysics, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur
Selected Publications:
Leseigneur, G. et al. (2026): Racemic isoprenoids in the Murchison meteorite derive from petroleum-based aerosol pollutants, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 690 : 120141.
doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2026.120141
Merzougui, A., Banreti, A., Ernst, A.L., Leseigneur, G., Meierhenrich, U. (2026): Chiral separation of chloroalkanes with the chromatographic column onboard Martian rovers, FEBS Letters.
doi:10.1002/1873-3468.70458
Leseigneur, G. & Meierhenrich, U. (2023): Chirality and the origins of Life. In The First Steps of Life. Di Mauro, E.; ISTE-Wiley, London, UK.
doi:10.1002/9781394264155.ch2
Leseigneur, G. et al. (2022): ESA’s Cometary Mission Rosetta—Re-Characterization of the COSAC Mass Spectrometry Results, Angewandte Chemie International Edition 2022, 61 (29): e202201925.
doi:10.1002/anie.202201925
Leseigneur, G. et al. (2022): COSAC’s Only Gas Chromatogram Taken on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, ChemPlusChem, 87 (6): e202200116.
doi:10.1002/cplu.202200116