The Cyprus Space Exploration Organisation (CSEO) has announced that Professor Hermann Opgenoorth, its Head of Space Weather, has been awarded the prestigious Julius Bartels Medal by the European Geosciences Union (EGU) for his exceptional contributions to substorms and space weather research, and his strong leadership in international collaboration.
CSEO says that Prof. Opgenoorth’s impressive career has covered a broad range of research interests, such as the magnetosphere, ionosphere and Mars-solar wind interaction. He has been Professor Emeritus at the Physics Department of the University of Umeå, Sweden, since 2019.
It adds that his encouragement of international collaboration is renowned in the solar-terrestrial communities. He was key in establishing the Mars Upper Atmosphere Network (MUAN), an international scientific group of scientists dedicated to multi-instrument investigation of the Mars-solar wind interaction.
It is recalled that in 2018, at the 10th MUAN Workshop, it was unanimously decided by attending delegations that MUAN would be permanently based in Nicosia, hosted by CSEO.) Furthermore, he made fundamental contributions to the inception and realisation of the International Living With a Star programme which has been crucial for the scientific community to better understand the ultimate driver of space weather, the Sun and how it and the space environment affects life and society.
As noted by the EGU, “the combination of Opgenoorth’s unique scientific research accomplishments during his exceptional career and his keenness for fostering international collaborations around space research makes him a very worthy recipient of the 2023 Julius Bartels Medal.”
The award will be officially presented to Prof. Opgenoorth at the EGU meeting later this spring.
The European Geosciences Union (EGU) is Europe’s premier geosciences union and is dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in Earth, planetary and space sciences for the benefit of humanity worldwide. It was established in September 2002, merging the European Geophysical Society (EGS) and the European Union of Geosciences (EUG), and has headquarters in Munich, Germany.
Julius Bartels (1899-1964) was a German geophysicist and statistician who made notable contributions to geomagnetism, meteorology and the physics of the Sun, Moon and ionosphere, as well as statistical methods for geophysics. He was the first President of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA).
Source: Cyprus News Agency