Dr. Laurent Loinard, researcher at the Instituto de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica (IRyA), UNAM Campus Morelia, received the 2020 TWAS Award in the area of Earth, Astronomy and Space Sciences. The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) is an international organism of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO.
“I am very happy to receive this award”, said Dr. Loinard after getting the news about this distinction that recognizes the career of researches in different fields of Science. The award requires nomination from a colleague: “Dr. Luis Felipe Rodríguez was kind enough to nominate me”, commented Dr. Loinard, who was was given the prize “for his contribution to the study of star-formation and the environment of black holes using very long baseline interferometry”, according to TWAS.
“TWAS is an organization focused on science made in underdeveloped or developing countries”, commented Dr. Loinard. “It is a very interesting initiative launched by Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 for his contribution to the unification of electromagnetic and weak interactions. TWAS promotes collaboration between these countries and organizes many interchange and cooperation activities.”
Dr. Loinard has significantly contributed to the development and use of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), a technique that uses two or more radiotelescopes that are hundreds or even thousands of kilometers apart. They work as a single “virtual” radiotelescope as large as the distance between the individual antennas, allowing to greatly improve the spatial resolution of the images reconstructed from their data.
Using VLBI, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration published in 2019 the first ever direct image of the region around the event horizon of a supermassive black hole, in this case the one at the center of M 87, a giant elliptical galaxy. This image was widely shared around the world, and is now an icon of the success of large international scientific collaborations. All members of the EHT collaboration, including Dr. Loinard, shared the 2020 Breakthrough Prize.
Dr. Laurent Loinard's career
Dr. Laurent Loinard obtained a bachelor in Physics and a Master’s and PhD degrees from the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France. In October 2020 he started working in Morelia at UNAM, where he is now a research scientist at IRyA. He currently is the head of UNAM’s Astrophysics postgraduate program, which incorporates several UNAM institutions at locations in Mexico City and Ensenada (Baja California), as well as Morelia.
Award announcement in the TWAS website:
https://twas.org/article/twas-announces-new-slate-award-winners
Press releases:
https://unamglobal.unam.mx/entrevista-con-el-dr-laurent-loinard-premio-twas-2020/
http://www.cienciario.net/premio-internacional-a-investigador-de-la-unam-morelia/
https://jjrosales.com/investigador-de-la-unam-morelia-recibe-premio-internacional-twas-2020/
https://www.dgcs.unam.mx/boletin/bdboletin/2021_035.html
https://www.gaceta.unam.mx/el-premio-twas-a-laurent-loinard/
http://www.anuies.mx/noticias_ies/merece-premio-internacional-twas-labor-acadmica-de-cientfico
https://elsemanario.com/ciencia-y-tecnologia/laurent-raymond-loinard-gana-premio-de-ciencia/
Contacto para medios:
Dr. René A. Ortega Minakata
Divulgación y Comunicación de la Ciencia
IRyA UNAM Campus Morelia
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