ELGRA Medals

ELGRA Medal

The ELGRA medal is attributed every two years by the ELGRA Management Committee to members for their exceptional services to our community and / or outstanding scientists in the field of microgravity life sciences, physical sciences and technology.
Persons who received the ELGRA medal are:

Year	Name	Research field	Motivation
December 1994	Prof. Ignacio Da Riva (post mortem)	Physical sciences	Founding member of ELGRA. Da Riva was one of the very first investigators to use and to study the microgravity environment even before the availability of the advanced modern spacecrafts.
December 1994	Dr. John Padday	Physical sciences	Founding member of ELGRA and outstanding work in capillarity.
March 1997	Dr. Yves Malmejac	Cristallisation, solidification	Founding member of ELGRA, president of ELGRA (1993-1995), participated in setting up the microgravity program at ESA, remarkable contributions to space research.
March 1997	Prof. Hubert Planel	Space biology and medicine	Vice-president of ELGRA. Pioneer in space biology/medicine/radiation biology with remarkable contributions to this field.
March 1999	Prof. Aristide Scano	Space medicine	Outstanding work in space medicine.
September 2001	Prof. Julius Siekmann	Fluid dynamics	For about 30 years he devoted most of his activity to microgravity research, contributed significantly to field of fluid dynamics.
September 2001	Dr. Wolfgang Briegleb	Space biology	Already in the early 60es he recognized the need to study the influence of weightlessness on living cells and devoted most of his work to the study of the slime mold Physarum polycephalum and the unicellular organism Paramecium under different gravity conditions.
April 2003	Dr. Lewis Gregory Briarty	Gravitational biology	For 20 years he studied the microgravity effects on plant cell growth and development. For more than 10 years he organized a summer school in Space biology.
September 2005	Dr. Augusto Cogoli	Gravitational biology	ELGRA member since the beginning, many years member of the management committee and ELGRA president from 1986-1989. His investigations on the influence of gravity changes on immune cells are outstanding.
September 2005	Prof. Johannes Straub	Physical sciences	Received medal for a pioneering and world-recognized accomplishment in critical point and boiling phenomena under microgravity.
September 2007	Prof. Gerard Perbal	Gravitational biology	Prof. Perbal (Univ. Pierre & Marie Curie, Paris) performed his first space experiment on Lentil roots in the ESA Biorack facility during the Shuttle D1 flight. A series of experiments followed on the IML-1 looking at g-threshold and IML-2 more focused on cell cycle. In Shuttle-to-Mir missions (SMM-03, 05, 06) he and his co-workers developed the hypothesis that statoliths are attached to actin filaments by myosin motor proteins. His most recent experiment was on the ISS in the European Modular Cultivation System, EMCS. Prof. Perbal, who was also ELGRA president from 1995-1997, received the ELGRA medal for his elaborate contributions to the field of gravisensing.
September 2007	Dr. Jan Vreeburg	Fluid Sciences	Dr. Vreeburg was one of the earliest European scientists who designed projects and facilities for microgravity fluid research in space. He was mission scientist for MASER 1-4, science team coordinator for the physical science on the DELTA-Soyuz Mission, and lead investigator for Sloshsat FLEVO. Dr. Vreeburg has served on various advisory committees of ESA and has been president of ELGRA from 1989 till 1993. The ELGRA medal is awarded to him in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the microgravity-science community.