Dr.
Xavier CHILLIER has been a research scientist (Ames Associate) at NASA/Ames
Research Center for over 2 years and returns there every summer. He studied
chemistry at the University of Geneva, where he got a Ph.D. in 1994. under
Professor Armand Buchs and Professor Fazil Gulacar. His subject was organic
geochemistry and mass spectrometry. A part of his thesis was done at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory (TN) where he stayed for a graduate work about
electrospray and ion trap mass spectrometry (ES/MS/MS) under Dr. Scott
A. McLuckey and Dr Gary J. Van Berkel.
In 1995-1996, he was a postdoctoral fellow at
Stanford University in the group of Professor Richard N. Zare, working
on a project involving a microprobe laser (desorption/laser ionization
in two steps) coupled with mass spectrometry (microL2MS) to analyze extraterrestrial
organic matter (PAHs, Amino-Acids).
He was associated with analysis of PAHs in interstellar
grains, dust and micrometeorites from Antarctica. He was also one of the
co-authors of the Science paper about a possible past life on Mars (1996,
Science, 273, 924-930).
In september 1996, he left Stanford for the East
Coast, near Washington D.C., where he was USRA/NASA consultant at Goddard
Space Flight Center, working with Dr. Louis J. Stief on kinetics of small
hydrocarbons, in a Titan simulated atmosphere.
At the beginning of 1997, he joined the
Astrochemistry
Laboratory at Ames to work on a project
of Laser Induced Fluorescence of PAHs in similar conditions as in interstellar
medium with with Dr. Louis J. Allamandola
and Dr. Bradley Stone .
In 1999, he went to Lyon (France) at University Claude-Bernard (Lyon 1) where he has worked on a project about PAHs and urban pollution. He got his Habilitation and was qualified Professor by the French Ministère de l'Education Nationale.
In 2001, he left Lyon, and came back in Switzerland, where he is now lecturer at the University of Geneva. He teaches a general chemistry class for geologist and archaeologist. He continues working on the "PAHs hypothesis".
Dr
Xavier CHILLIER
Chargé de Cours
Département de chimie-physique
Sciences II/Université de Genève
30 quai E. Ansermet
CH-1211 GENEVE 4
tel. (022) 379 6525
fax: (022) 379 6518