Yannick Geiger

Yannick Geiger was born in Nantes (France) and raised in Frankfurt am Main (Germany). He studied chemistry at the University of Strasbourg (France) with short stays in Québec and Dublin. He obtained his PhD in 2019 under the supervision of Stéphane Bellemin-Laponnaz on the study of non-linear effects in asymmetric catalysis. He then moved to the University of Groningen (Netherlands) as a post-doctoral researcher in the group of Sijbren Otto, where he worked on mechanistic aspects of supramolecular self-replicators. He came back to Strasbourg in 2024, first as a post-doc in the group of Joseph Moran at ISIS, then on a tenure-track position (Chaire de Professeur Junior) at Chimie de la Matière Complexe (CMC). There, he associated with Guillermo Monreal Santiago to launch the Laboratory of Systems Chemistry, of which he is the administrative head.

Yannick’s scientific interests evolve around the emergence of phenomena from molecular aggregation in fields such as catalysis, supramolecular assembly and reaction networks. A particular emphasis lies in understanding the inner working of such systems (“Systems Mechanisms”). A related project is the builtup of a robotic platform for automated preparation & analysis of chemical reactions. The aim is to automatize the acquisition of data necessary to understand complex chemical systems. On long term, this will also be extended to synthetic organic chemistry and involve machine learning for data analysis & experiment design.

Recurrent subjects are :

• Transition of chemistry to biology (origins of life/synthetic life)
• Desymmetrization of processes by chirality
• (auto)catalysis & self-replication
• Driven processes
• Large aggregates/condensates with phase behaviour
• Reaction & Systems Mechanisms

And apart from science? Yannick enjoys cooking, athletics, hiking & cinema. You’ll find a big shelf full of Star Wars stuff at his home!