My research interests are in the fields of presolar grains, isotope cosmochemistry, stellar nucleosynthesis, dust formation in circumstellar and interstellar environments, meteoritics, early solar system processes and chronology, and development of analytical techniques for the study of extra-terrestrial materials.

Ongoing research: Presolar grains or stardust

Presolar grains are bona fide pieces of stars preserved in primitive meteorites that provide an unparalleled opportunity to study a wide range of astrophysical and cosmochemical problems in the laboratory. My research efforts over the last eight years (including doctoral and post-doctoral work) have concentrated on multi-element isotopic analyses and correlated multi-technique analyses (SIMS, RIMS, TEM, Raman spectroscopy, SXRF/SXRD) of presolar graphite grains from the Orgueil (C2-ungrouped) meteorite. This has allowed me to identify a variety of circumstellar environments which produced presolar graphite grains. I am in the process of carrying out a chemical separation of presolar grains from the Tagish Lake (CI-ungrouped) and Jbilet Winselwan (CM2) meteorites. I also study N isotopic ratios in presolar SiC grains from meteorites with varying cosmic ray exposure ages. The goal of this study is to try and explain ¹⁵N excesses by various pre-accretionary nebular processes.