Pierre's research interests focus on the building blocks and early history of the Solar System history, and the origin of life through the coordinated study of circumstellar and interstellar dust grains and organic molecules in unequiliberated planetary materials e.g. meteorites, micrometeorites and interplanetary dust particles) His background is in Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry, from terrestrial samples e.g. Pb and Zn isotopes in Archean komatiitic lava flows) to primitive extraterrestrial samples e.g. meteorites and micrometeorites) using multi-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and a variety of in situ ion- and electron-microscopy techniques e.g. secondary ion mass spectrometry, Auger and Raman spectroscopy, focused-ion-beam scanning-electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy)