The official award ceremony for the 2023 SIGRAV Prize (see this earlier news item), during which I received the medal from SIGRAV President Professor Stefano Liberati, was held today during the XXV SIGRAV conference. It is really a great honor to receive this Prize, given the extremely prestigious list of earlier winners. Beyond a symbol of academic recognition, it is of course a symbol of responsibility to continue carrying out quality research and mentoring the younger generations, and I will strive to continue doing so. Upon receiving the Prize I have also officially become a lifetime member of SIGRAV.
XXV SIGRAV conference
I’m really excited to be attending the XXV SIGRAV conference of the Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation in the beautiful city of Trieste! I will be picking up the 2023 SIGRAV Prize (see this earlier news item) and on the occasion I will also be delivering a plenary talk on “Searching for dark energy off the beaten track” (whose slides you can find here), presenting some of the ideas I’ve been developing over the past years. This is my second in-person conference after the pandemic, but the first which actually required travelling (the previous one took place in Trento). There are lots of people attending whose work I’ve been following for years, or whom I’m working together with or even wrote papers with, but never had the chance to meet in person (just to mention a few, Vitor Cardoso, Che-Yu Chen, Gaetano Lambiase, Gabriele Gionti, and Joe Silk), so I look forward to many interesting discussions!
SIGRAV Prize!
I am honored to announce that I have been awarded the 2023 SIGRAV Prize (yes, given the day, I did initially think this was an April’s Fool)! This is one of the most prestigious Italian early-career awards in my field, and is awarded by the Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation (SIGRAV) to under-40 promising Italian researchers who have made important contributions to the fields of gravitation, astrophysics, and cosmology. It is a true honor to receive this Prize, which boasts a prestigious list of previous winners, back then young but now all tremendously successful researchers and most of them leaders in their fields, among whom (just to name a few): Augusto Sagnotti, Massimo Bianchi, Massimo Giovannini, Paolo Pani, Alessandra Buonanno, Alberto Vecchio, Rosalba Perna, Mariafelicia De Laurentis, Enrico Barausse, Marica Branchesi, and Davide Gerosa. I will be receiving the Prize (a silver medal) and delivering a plenary talk about my work at the XXV SIGRAV conference in Trieste this September, where the other winners will also be awarded (the other SIGRAV Prize has been awarded to Giulia Gubitosi, whereas the Amaldi medals have been awarded to my colleague and collaborator Joe Silk and Gabriele Veneziano). It is always great to be recognized in one’s home country, and I would like to sincerely thank my mentors and collaborators, without whom this would not have been possible!
