Jan Leitner

Personal Information:

ResearcherID:     A-7391-2015
ORCID:              0000-0003-3655-6273
Google Scholar:   https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pBIuiFIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Education
2005    Diploma in Physics, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany.
2008    Doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.), Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany.

Current Position

Since 04/2025:

Scientific Staff Technician, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Multiphase Analytics Lab.

Previous Positions

09/2022–03/2025:

Research Associate, Heidelberg University, Institute of Earth Sciences, Geo- and Cosmochemistry Group, Heidelberg, Germany. (DFG research grant LE 3279/3-1 “Probing the Protosolar Cloud: Characterization of the Solar System’s circumstellar building blocks at the sub-micrometer scale”.

03/2019–08/2022:

Research Associate, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Nano- and Microparticle Research Group, Mainz, Germany. (DFG research grant LE 3279/2-2 “The Origin of Nitrogen on Earth: Implications from Isotope and Petrologic Studies of Planetary Materials at the Sub-Micrometer Scale” within the SPP (priority program) 1833: “Building a Habitable Earth”.

03/2016–02/2019:

Research Associate, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Nano- and Microparticle Research Group, Mainz, Germany. (DFG research grant LE 3279/2-1 “The Origin of Nitrogen on Earth: Implications from Isotope and Petrologic Studies of Planetary Materials at the Sub-Micrometer Scale” within the SPP (priority program) 1833: “Building a Habitable Earth”).

03/2014–02/2016:

Research Associate, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Nano- and Microparticle Research Group, Mainz, Germany. (DFG research grant LE 3279/1-1 “The Distribution and Inventory of Stardust Grains in Primitive Solar System Materials: Implications from Isotopic, Elemental and Petrologic Studies of Meteorites and Cometary Dust” within the SPP (priority program) 1385: “The first ten million years of the solar system – a planetary materials approach”).

01/2010–02/2014:

Research Associate, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Nano- and Microparticle Research Group, Mainz, Germany. (DFG research grants HO 2163/1-1 & HO 2163/1-2 within the SPP (priority program) 1385: “The first ten million years of the solar system – a planetary materials approach”).

01/2008–12/2009:

Research Scholarship of the Max Planck Society, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Nano- and Microparticle Research Group, Mainz, Germany.

10/2005–12/2007:

Research Associate, Institut für Planetologie, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany.

05/2005–09/2005:

Research Assistant, Institut für Planetologie, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany

Awards

NASA Group Achievement Award for the ISPE consortium, 2013.
DFG SPP 1385 Award: Best senior scientist paper 2013.

Commissions of Trust
Since 2009 – Peer reviewer for “Meteoritics and Planetary Science”
Since 2013 – Peer reviewer for “The Astrophysical Journal” and “Earth and Planetary Science Letters”
Since 2016 – Peer reviewer for “Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta”
NASA NSPIRES panel and non-panel reviewer
DFG (German Research Foundation) non-panel reviewer
External examiner for PhD thesis (University of Manchester, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, 2018)
External examiner for PhD thesis (University of Copenhagen, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, 2019)

Memberships
Meteoritical Society
Geochemical Society

Most important Publications (listed in chronological order)
1)    Westphal A. J., et al. (2014). Evidence for interstellar origin of seven dust particles collected by the Stardust spacecraft. Science, 345, 786–791.
2)    Vollmer C., Kepaptsoglou D. M., Leitner J., Busemann H., Spring N., Ramasse Q., Hoppe P., and Nittler L. R. (2014) Fluid-induced organic synthesis in the solar nebula recorded in extraterrestrial dust from meteorites. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 111 (43), 15338–15343.
3)    Leitner J., Vollmer C., Floss C., Zipfel J., and Hoppe P. (2016) Ancient Stardust in Fine-grained Chondrule Dust Rims from Carbonaceous Chondrites. Earth Planet. Sci. Letters, 434, 117–128.
4)    Hoppe P., Leitner J., and Kodolányi J. (2017) The stardust abundance in the local interstellar cloud at the birth of the Solar System. Nature Astronomy, 1, 617–620.
5)    Leitner J., Hoppe P., Floss C., Hillion F., and Henkel T. (2018) Correlated Nanoscale Characterization of a Unique Complex Oxygen-rich Stardust Grain: Implications for Circumstellar Dust Formation. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta, 221, 255–274.
6)    Leitner J. and Hoppe P. (2019) A New Population of Dust from Stellar Explosions among Meteoritic Stardust. Nature Astronomy, 3, 725–729.
7)    Leitner J., Metzler K., Vollmer C., Floss C., Haenecour P., Kodolányi J., Harries D., and Hoppe P. (2020) The Presolar Grain Inventory of Fine-grained Chondrule Rims in the Mighei-type (CM) Chondrites. Meteorit. Planet. Sci., 55, 1176–1206.
8)    Vollmer C., Leitner J., Kepaptsoglou D., Ramasse Q., King A. J., Schofield P. S., Bischoff A., and Hoppe P. (2020) A pristine 15N-depleted organic component detected within the carbonaceous chondrite Maribo. Scientific Reports, 10:20251.
9)    Hoppe P., Leitner J., Kodolányi J., Borrmann S., and Jones A. P. (2022) Dust from Supernovae and their Progenitors in the Solar Nebula. Nature Astronomy, 6, 1027–1034.
10)    Vollmer C., Kepaptsoglou D., Leitner J., Ramasse Q. M., Mosberg A. M., King A. J., Bays C. L., Schofield P. F., and Araki T. (2024) High-Spatial Resolution Spectroscopy of Primordial Nitrogen Compounds in the Observed UK Meteorite Fall Winchcombe. Nature Communications, 15 (1), 778.