The annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union AGU takes place from 9 to 13 December in San Francisco, USA. A total of four GFZ scientists will be awarded prizes.

Frank Flechtner, Head of GFZ section Global Geomonitoring and Gravity Field, receives the Ivan I. Mueller Award for Distinguished Service and Leadership from the AGU Geodesy Section for "significant services or leadership for the international geodesy community". Flechtner received this recognition in particular for his achievements in the realization, operation, and evaluation of the GRACE ('Gravitiy Recovery and Climate Experiment') and GRACE Follow-on satellite missions to explore the Earth's gravity field, of which he is scientific director. In October, he was already awarded the Outstanding Public Leadership Medal for this work by the American space agency NASA.

Sergey S. Lobanov, Junior Research Group Leader in the Chemistry and Physics of Geomaterials section, is awarded the Early Career Award in the Mineral and Rock Physics Division.

Nikita Aseev, section Magnetospheric Physics, receives the Edmond M. Dewan Scholarship for his research thematically settled within divisions Atmospheric Sciences and Space Physics and Aeronomy.

Irina Zhelavskaya, section Magnetospheric Physics, receives the Outstanding Student Presentation Award in the Division Space and Aeronomy Physics. She already gave the presentation entitled "A combined neural network - and physics-based approach for modeling the plasmasphere dynamics during extreme geomagnetic events" at the last AGU annual meeting in 2018. (ak)

Further information:

• More information about the Outstanding Student Presentation Award 
• 2019 AGU Divisions Award list