Major Romanian newspaper honors Jacobs Alumna
Aurora Simionescu as 'The Person of the Year'

The Romanian daily newspaper Cotidianul together with the local Romanian television station “Realitatea TV” gave a special award, “The Person of The Year”, to Aurora Simionescu, who graduated from Jacobs University with a Bachelor of Science in Earth and Space Sciences in 2005 and is now studying for her PhD at the Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany.

[ Dec 19, 2008]  With its award Cotidianul honors young people who accomplished major achievements in science, business or the social life. Aurora Simionescu received the award for her work on "Detection of hot gas in the filament connecting the clusters of galaxies Abell 222 and Abell 223" published in Astronomy and Astrophysics (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:200809599) this year. Aurora did the research for this paper as part of a research group from the Max Planck Institute and two other institutes from Netherlands, which detected a missing half in a bridge-like filament connecting two clusters of galaxies.

'The Person of the Year' award from Cotidianul, one of the most important newspapers in Romania, is very popular and is extensively communicated throughout the media there; other nominations include several well known people from Romania: politicians, artists and athletes.