Simonetta Di Pippo receives prestigious San Valentino d’Oro award
Simonetta Di Pippo, ESA Director of Human Spaceflight, has received the San Valentino d’Oro international award for her "dedication, commitment and love for her profession", in a ceremony that took place on 26 February in Terni, Italy.
The prize is given annually to prominent personalities in the field of literature, arts, sciences, music, sports, entertainment and social life by the Comitato per la premiazione di un messaggio d’amore (Committee for the awarding of a love message).
The award ceremony was part of the events organised in Terni, Italy, a city along the Nera River whose patron saint is Saint Valentine. The event was held at the conference hall of the Palazzo Gazzolli, where Simonetta Di Pippo proudly received the prize in the category of physics, astrophysics and scientific research.
"I am delighted and honoured to receive an award previously given to some of the most distinguished Italian scientists. Some of them are very linked to my daily activity such as the physicist Edoardo Amaldi, as ESA’s third Automated Transfer Vehicle has been named after him", she declared.
Among those personalities previously honoured with this award are Carlo Rubbia, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984 with Simon van der Meer for the work leading to the discovery of the W and Z particles at CERN, Roberto Battiston, Deputy Spokesperson of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), Giovanni Bignami, former president of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and presently COSPAR Chair, and Roberto Vittori, ESA astronaut.
