Image: Julie Castillo Rogez.
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Photo credit: J. Castillo-Rogez
dr Julie Castillo-Rogez, planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California (USA), and Dr. Martin Jutzi, physicist at the Physics Institute of the University of Bern (Switzerland), were jointly awarded the 2022 Paolo Farinella Prize for their outstanding contributions in the field ofAsteroids: Physics, Dynamics, Modeling and Observations”. The award ceremony took place during the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2022 in Granada, Spain, followed by a 15-minute award presentation from each of the winners.
The annual prize was created in 2010 to honor the memory of the Italian scientist Paolo Farinella (1953-2000). The award recognizes an outstanding researcher, no older than 47 (Farinella’s age when he died), who has achieved important results in one of Farinella’s research areas. The award focuses on a different area of research each year, and in 2022 the twelfth edition was dedicated to asteroids, which have become an increasingly important area of interest for the scientific community in recent years.
dr Castillo-Rogez has made important contributions to our understanding of the physical and chemical evolution of small and medium-sized bodies in the Solar System. Through modeling and synthesis of existing data, she has gathered information on the origins and dynamic evolution of objects from the main belt between Mars and Jupiter to the Trans-Neptunian region, i.e. the region that extends further from the Sun than the planet Neptune. Her multidisciplinary expertise, which includes geology, geophysics and planetology, has enabled her to apply increasingly sophisticated tools to understand the geochemical evolution of objects potentially characterized by volatile elements. The contribution of Dr. Castillo-Rogez was critical to the success of the Dawn mission to the dwarf planet Ceres: prior to the mission, her studies paved the way to understanding that Ceres likely had an underground ocean in its past and may still harbor salt water; After the mission, their analysis of Dawn’s data led to the hypothesis that medium-sized cold bodies could be past or present ocean worlds.
dr Jutzi has made outstanding contributions to the study of collision processes involving bodies ranging from small asteroids to planetary scales. In particular, he developed a state-of-the-art smoothed particle (SPH) shock physics code specifically suited to study the collision regimes between small bodies, where the complex effects of material strength, friction, porosity, as well as gravity determine the outcome simultaneously. dr Jutzi also managed to reproduce the evolution of the observed shape of asteroid Vesta after two overlapping collisions on a planetary scale, and even provided maps of the impact cavity and deposition of ejected material. He recently contributed to the numerical modeling of the impact of NASA’s DART mission on the moon of the binary asteroid didymus, showing that the small moon Dimorphos can be completely reshaped by the impact.
Overall, the work of Dr. Castillo Rogez and Dr. Jutzi has led to a deeper understanding of the nature and evolution of asteroids, both from a theoretical and an observational point of view.
dr Castillo-Rogez received her MS in Geophysics and her PhD in Planetary Geophysics from the University of Rennes (France). She is currently Associate Scientist for the Planetary Science Directorate at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (California, USA).
dr Jutzi received his MS in Physics from the University of Bern (Switzerland) and then his PhD in Physics from the University of Bern and Nice Observatory (France). Today he is a senior researcher at the University of Bern.
Before receiving the award, Dr. Castillo-Rogez: “I am honored to win this award, especially since there are so many deserving colleagues. Most of my work is based on observations from the Cassini-Huygens and Dawn missions, both of which build on extremely successful international collaboration. Working with these teams has been an incredible experience and resulted in long lasting friendships on both sides of the Atlantic. That makes receiving this award at the EPSC 2022 very special. Unfortunately, I never had the privilege of meeting Dr. Getting to know Farinella, although I have often referred to his work.”
dr Jutzi said: “I am very honored to be awarded the Paolo Farinella Prize. For me, this is an important acknowledgment of my contribution to the understanding of asteroid physics, particularly the impact processes that have determined the evolution and current state of these objects – some of which are currently being explored by ongoing space missions. I am grateful to my scientific mentors and colleagues who helped me to achieve this.”
About the Paolo Farinella Prize
The Paolo Farinella Prize (https://www.europlanet-society.org/paolo-farinella-prize/) was established to honor the memory and preeminence of Paolo Farinella (1953-2000), an exceptional scientist and human being, in recognition of his significant contributions to Farinella’s areas of interest, ranging from planetary science to space geodesy Physics, Popularization of space science and security, arms control and disarmament. The winner of the award is selected each year on the basis of his/her overall research results in a selected area from among candidates with international and interdisciplinary collaborations who are no older than 47 years at the time of his/her death, Farinella’s age of March 25, 2000. The Prize was first proposed during the “International Workshop on Paolo Farinella, the Scientist and the Man” held in Pisa in 2010 and supported by the University of Pisa, ISTI/CNR and IAPS-INAF (Rome).
The first “Paolo Farinella Prize” was awarded to William Bottke in 2011 for his contribution to the field of “Physics and Dynamics of Small Solar System Bodies”. In 2012, the award went to John Chambers for his contribution to the field of “The Formation and Early Evolution of the Solar System”. 2013 to Patrick Michel for his work on “Collision Processes in the Solar System”. 2014 to David Vokrouhlicky for his contributions to “our understanding of the dynamics and physics of the solar system, including the effects of solar radiation pressure on the orbits of asteroids and artificial satellites”, 2015 to Nicolas Biver for his studies on “the Molecular and Isotopic Composition of Cometary Volatiles using submillimeter and millimeter ground and space observations” and in 2016 to Kleomenis Tsiganis for “his studies on the application of celestial mechanics to the dynamics of planetary systems, including the development of the Nice model”. 2017 to Simone Marchi for his contributions to “Understanding the complex issues related to impact history and the physical evolution of the inner Solar System, including the Moon”. In 2018 to Francis Nimmo for his contributions to our “understanding of the internal structure and evolution of ice bodies in the solar system and the resulting influence on their surface processes”. 2019 to Scott Sheppard and Chad Trujillo for their outstanding collaborative work on the “observational characterization of the Kuiper Belt and the Neptune Trojan population”. In 2020 to Jonathan Fortney and Heather Knutson for their significant contribution to our “understanding of the structure, evolution and atmospheric dynamics of giant planets”. Finally, in 2021, to Diana Valencia and Lena Noack for their significant contributions to “our understanding of the internal structure and dynamics of terrestrial and superterrestrial exoplanets.”
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