Sedimentary organic matter contains varying abundances of different metals, inherited from precursor biomass or secondarily incorporated into the carbonaceous matrix. The diagnosticity of this organometal fingerprint, the effect that diagenetically-complexed metals have on organic preservation and the C-cycle, catalytic influence on subsequent rearrangement/conversion, or the role of metal bearing organics in ore formation are still insufficiently understood. We focus on the fundamentals of organic metal incorporation aim to better understanding the role of metals on various levels in the global carbon cycle.

How did life evolve from the first bacteria to increasingly complex life, culminating in the appearance of animals and eventually ourselves? How can we better trace incipient life on Earth and beyond? We study the continuous reciprocal interaction between biological evolution and a changing Earth system from a holistic perspective, and search for new biosignatures. Our focus lies on fossil carbon in the form of morphological remnants (fossils), stable isotope signatures in organics and on ancient sedimentary hydrocarbons as the remnants of biological lipids. Parallel molecular biological approaches focus on evolving lipid biosynthetic capabilities through Earth history.

In the face of rapid global environmental and climatic change, there is an urgent need to distinguish between natural mechanisms and human-induced processes. Understanding the space-time dynamics of extreme events is a prerequisite for their predictabilty. We aim at a better projection of Earth system change—ecosystems, biogeochemical cycles, weather patterns, biodiversity and landscape dynamics—by studying the carbon cycle, climate and ecosystem dynamics during periods in the recent past that saw higher average seawater temperatures, elevated pCO2 or accelerated rates of change. In more recent deposits, we monitor the onset of an anthropogenic overprint.

How and why are certain lipids biosynthesized, what regulates this activity, how are biosynthetic capacities phylogenetically distributed and can we constrain the evolution of such capacities throughout Earth history? We focus on fresh biomass and on fossil lipids, using a combination of molecular, isotopic and genomic approaches to understand the origins of modern biosynthetic pathways, and to obtain more details about isotope partitioning during these. As a new addition, we explore the utility of isotope chemistry as a new tracer tool for reading the human metabolome.

The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is insufficient for reaching the currently set climate goals. 'Real' compensation is needed in the form of active greenhouse gas removal, yet most negative emission technologies are limited by cost, TRL, scalability, ecological risk or societal resistance. We explore carbon-cycle based mechanistic solutions, such as the inertinization of biomass-carbon and waste-carbon in order to extend the residence time of these CO2-sinks and evaluating environmental aspects of long-term storage.

The relative abundance of rare stable isotopes incorporated into biological molecules carries information on used substrates, biosynthetic pathways, environmental conditions and post-depositional alteration processes. Advances in high-resolution MS now allow us to study the internal isotope anatomy of individual molecules. By looking at isotope 'clumping' and determining the likelihood of rare isotope intramolecular patterning, we explore information that can be recorded in the 'isotope anatomy' of molecules.