ELGRA Medals

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.
September 2009	Prof. Dag Linnarsson	Human Physiology	Prof.dr. Linnarsson (Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden). His main interest regarding gravitational physiology is in the human pulmonary system, its function and adapatation to altered gravity conditions. During his career Prof. Linnarsson has been in various spaceflight related advisory boards such as the ESA Life Sciences Working Group, Swedish Astronaut Selection Comm., ISS Utilization Panel and ESF-ESSC. He is also in the Board of Trustees, International Academy of Astronautics and member of the ESA topical teams on Artificial Gravity and the Human Hypergravity Habitat. Currently, he is the Group Leader of the Environmental Physiology group at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology. The group has various projects involving mainly research on the pulmonary system, its function under different environmental conditions, such as under altered gravity, both hypo- and hyper-gravity.
September 2009	Dr.Ing. Alberto Passerone	Fluid Sciences	Dr. Ing. Alberto Passerone, has a recognized expertise in the study of physico-chemical characteristics of interfaces, with a particular reference to the measurement of surface and interfacial tensions in liquid-vapour, liquid-liquid and solid-liquid interfaces, both at room temperature and in the high temperature range. He made specific contributions to the understanding of faceting transitions in liquid-solid metallic systems and to the calculation of their interfacial tension, to the dependence of surface tension on oxygen partial pressure. During his carreer he served as the director of the CNR ICFAM institute, deputy director of the Genoa IENI Unit, president of the ESA Microgravity Advisory Committee and as a member of the Scientific Council of the Italian Space Agency, ASI. He served also as ELGRA General Secretary from 1987 to 1992 and as the ELGRA vice-president from 1993 to 1996.