OCES Seminar: From Frequencies to Function: Decoding Environmental Organic Matter with Ultrahigh-Resolution Mass Spectrometry

Dr. Oliver J. Lechtenfeld studies what happens to organic matter as it moves through soils, rivers, and oceans: where it comes from, how it changes, and why some of it persists. He is a senior scientist and heads the BioGeoOmics research group at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig. His work brings together ultrahigh-resolution mass spectrometry, analytical method development, and chemoinformatics to make the molecular complexity of natural systems accessible to study.

Trained in analytical and environmental chemistry at the University of Ulm, Lechtenfeld began his research career in marine geochemistry at the Alfred Wegener Institute. He continued there with doctoral research in marine biogeochemistry, receiving his PhD from the University of Bremen in 2012. A postdoctoral appointment at the University of South Carolina followed before he joined the UFZ in 2015.

Lechtenfeld’s research draws on collaborations across analytical chemistry, biogeochemistry, and environmental science. His early work showed how bacterial metabolites contribute to the pool of long-lived organic carbon in the ocean. Since then, his research has expanded across marine, freshwater, and terrestrial environments, connecting the molecular composition of organic matter with its transport, reactivity, and persistence. At the UFZ, he has advanced LC–FT-ICR MS methods that reveal highly polar compounds and allow the direct analysis of unextracted water samples, including seawater. He uses stable isotope labelling to follow ozonation products and other organic matter transformations in natural and engineered systems. More recently, his group pioneered molecular-formula-specific carbon isotope analysis at natural abundance in complex natural organic matter mixtures.

With collaborators around the world, Lechtenfeld investigates microbial carbon cycling in soils, changes in riverine organic matter from source to sea, the fate of terrestrial carbon in the Arctic Ocean, and how organic matter interacts during water treatment.