Dear Authors,

We are pleased to announce the “Universe 2021 Best Paper Awards” for research and review articles from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2020. One review and three research articles will receive this award. The papers will be selected after a thorough evaluation by the journal award committee, and the winners will be announced in late March of 2021.

Eligibility for the award:

– Papers published in Universe from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2020;
– Open to all career levels;
– Both regular and Special Issue submissions will be considered.

Selection criteria:

The papers will be selected by the journal award committee according to the following criteria:
– Originality and significance;
– Citation and download rates until the end of February 2021;
– Scientific merit and broad impact.

Prizes:

The winners will receive the following:
– A certificate;
– 500 CHF for the winner of the Best Review Award; 300 CHF for the Best Research Article Award;
– A waiver to publish a feature paper free of charge in Universe (following the normal peer-review procedure).

Kind regards,
Universe Editorial Office

Dear Colleagues,
It is with deepest regret that we announce that the Universe 2021 Travel Awards has been postponed to 2022 due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

We are pleased to announce that Universe will be participating in the 2021–2022 Travel Awards for PhD or enrolled as a PhD student. Applications will be assessed by an Evaluation Committee consisting of senior scholars from the Universe Editorial Board.

Candidate Requirements:
– Holds a PhD or is enrolled as a PhD student (proof required);
– Has plans to attend an international conference in 2022 (oral presentation or poster).

Required Application Documents:
– Information on the conference the applicant is planning to attend and the abstract that will be submitted;
– Curriculum Vitae and list of publications;
– Justification letter describing the focus of the research (max. 800 words);
– Letter of recommendation from at least 1 supervisor.

The winners (two awardees) will each be awarded 800 CHF and a certificate.

Please submit your applications for the Universe 2021–2022 Travel Awards through the link (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/universe/awards) by 30 November 2021. Prizes will be awarded 20 January 2022 and announced on the Universe website.

If you have any questions, please contact us at <[email protected]> or <[email protected]>.

Kind regards,
Universe Editorial Office

Universe 2020 Best Paper Awards for Special Issue (500 CHF)

Winner Announcement Deadline: 30 April 2021

The Universe Editorial Office is inviting submissions to the Special Issue “ Universe: 5th Anniversary ”. You can see more details about the Special Issue here (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/universe/special_issues/5th-universe). Two winners will be selected for this award based on the citations by 31 March 2021.

Judging Criteria:

– Scientific merit and broad impact;
– Relevance to the journal’s field;
– Originality of research objectives and/or ideas presented;
– Creativity of the study design or uniqueness of approaches and concepts;
– Clarity of presentation.

Two winners will be selected from this Special Issue and each will receive 500 CHF and a certificate.

Please submit your paper here (https://susy.mdpi.com/user/manuscripts/upload?journal=universe). The sooner the better.

Dear Colleagues,

To acknowledge all the reviewers who so generously give their time to ensure high-quality publications in Universe, the Editorial Board and Editorial Office would like to dedicate an award to ten reviewers for their commitment, professionalism, and timeliness in reviewing manuscripts for Universe.

What are the pre-requisites to be eligible for this award?

All the reviewers who assisted with the review process of Universe during 2020 will automatically be included.

What are the evaluation standards?

The number and quality of reviews will be taken into consideration.

What awards will be granted?

The ten winners will receive the following:

– A certificate.
– A waiver to publish a feature paper free of charge in Universe in 2021 after our standard peer-review procedure.

When will the winners be announced?

The winners will be announced at the end of March 2021 on the journal website.

For those experts who have not yet reviewed papers for Universe but would like to do so, you can register as a reviewer at https://susy.mdpi.com/volunteer/profile/, edit, or send your profile to the Universe Editorial Office ([email protected]).

Kind regards,
Universe Editorial Office

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the Universe 2020 Young Investigator Award is Dr. Lavinia Heisenberg.

Dr. Lavinia Heisenberg is a Professor of the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. Dr. Lavinia Heisenberg’s research interests lie at the interface between gravitational physics, cosmology, particle physics, and computational astrophysics ranging from purely theoretical topics to more observational subjects. Dr. Lavinia Heisenberg received her PhD in 2014 and has an outstanding publication record, comprising 102 publications in total, among which 81 are published in peer-reviewed international journals, 10 pre-prints are currently under review, 8 are major review articles, 2 are contributions to proceedings of conferences, and one monograph has been published by Springer. Dr. Lavinia Heisenberg’s publications have attracted 5200 citations with a Hirsch index = 36, where 16 of them are top-cited and 12 of them have more than 50 citations. She is clearly a rising star in the field of physics and the universe. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Lavinia Heisenberg for her outstanding achievements.

As the awardee, Dr. Lavinia Heisenberg will receive an honorarium of 2000 CHF, an offer to publish a paper free of charge before the end of 2021 in Universe after peer-review, and a certificate.

We would like to thank all the nominators from various fields of study for their participation and all the Award Committee Members for their evaluation of the many excellent nominations.

Kind regards,
Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Iorio
Editor-in-Chief, Universe, on behalf of Universe 2020 Young Investigator Evaluation Committee

Dear Colleagues,

As Editor-in-Chief of Universe, I am pleased to announce the winners of the Universe Travel Awards for 2020.

The awards have been granted to Dr. Ehsan Hatefi, a Research Scientist at Scuola Normale Superiore and INFN, Italy; and Dr. Ángel Rincón, who was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Physics from Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Chile.

With so many high-quality applicants, the evaluation process and final decision were challenging. We would like to thank all the applicants for submitting their work, collectively covering a diverse and fascinating range of research topics. On behalf of the assessment committee, I congratulate the winners on their accomplishments.

Editor-in-Chief
Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Iorio

Dear Colleagues,

The Editorial Board and the Editorial Team of Universe gratefully acknowledge all those who have kindly given their time to review papers submitted to Universe, and are delighted to announce the winners of the 2019 Universe Outstanding Reviewer Award. The criteria used for the selection of the winning reviewers included the number of papers reviewed as well as the quality and speed of the reviews.

We congratulate the following referees (in no particular order), who have been selected to receive an Outstanding Reviewer Award in recognition of their significant contributions over the past year:

Lorenzo Iorio, Ministero dell’Universita e della Ricerca

Oleg Tsupko, Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Irina Dymnikova, Uniwersytet Warminsko-Mazurski w Olsztynie

Volker Perlick, University of Bremen

Kazuharu Bamba, Fukushima University

Matthias Bartelmann, Universität Heidelberg

Each of them will receive a Certificate of Appreciation, as well as the chance to publish a paper in Universe free of charge in 2020.

Dear Colleagues,

As Editor-in-Chief, I am pleased to announce the winners of the 2019 Travel Awards sponsored by Universe. The awards were granted to Dr. Mahdis Ghodrati, a postdoctoral fellow at the Yangzhou University, and Ms. Mariana Carrillo Gonzalez, a Ph.D. student at the University of Pensylvania. The awards recipients will be supported with 800 Swiss Francs each, to be used towards travel expenses to attend conferences of their choice in 2019.

Dr. Mahdis Ghodrati’s current research focuses on holographic complexity and applications of AdS/CFT in quantum information. She is planning to present her work on “The Connection between Holographic Entanglement and Complexity of Purification” at the Quantum Information and String Theory, Kyoto, Japan,
27 May–28 June 2019.

Ms. Mariana Carrillo Gonzalez’s current research focuses on high energy physics and particle cosmology. She is planning to present her work at the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, Lindau, Bavaria, Germany, 1–5 July 2019 and [email protected]: Multimessenger Universe Conference, Pennsylvania, USA, 24–27 June 2019.

Universe is proud to support these two young researchers working in the field of theoretical physics and wishes them further success in their careers. We are grateful to all who submitted applications—thank you for letting us get to know you and your work. We hope all of you continue to pay attention to Universe in the future.

I would like to congratulate the winners and thank the selection committee for their excellent work in selecting the winners from such a large number of excellent candidate profiles.

Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Iorio
Editor-in-Chief

The Universe Editorial Board and Editorial Team would like to gratefully acknowledge the time and energy given by reviewers in checking manuscripts submitted to Universe. It is due to their efforts that the high quality of the journal and quick turnaround is maintained.

The following referees have been selected to receive the “Universe 2018 Outstanding Reviewer Awards” for the quantity, timeliness, and quality of their reviews in 2018 (in alphabetical order by surname):

Ivan Arraut, The Open University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Kazuharu Bamba, Fukushima University, Japan
Martin Bojowald, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Peter Millington, The University of Nottingham, UK
Kimball Milton, The University of Oklahoma, USA
Lijing Shao, Peking University, China
Douglas Singleton, California State University, USA

Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Iorio
Editor-in-Chief

Dear Colleagues,

As Editor-in-Chief of Universe, it is my pleasure to announce that the winners of the 2018 Universe Travel Awards are Dr. Yaghoub Heydarzade of the Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran and Dr. Scott Melville from the Imperial College London, London, UK. They will be supported with 800 Swiss Francs towards travel expenses to attend conferences of their choice in 2018.

Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Iorio
Editor-in-Chief

Dear Colleagues,

The Universe Outstanding Reviewer recognition is given to commend the top reviewers for their outstanding peer review efforts in 2017. Recipients were chosen by the Universe Editorial Office, from the journal editorial teams for the quantity, timeliness and quality of their reviews. All the following winners will receive a certificate. Universe Editorial Office is extremely grateful to reviewers for the time, energy and devotion that they have given to peer-reviews.

Júlio César Fabris, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Brazil
Lorenzo Iorio, dell’ Università e della Ricerca (M.I.U.R.)-Istruzione, Italy
Roman Pasechnik, Lund University, Sweden
Saeed Mirshekari, ICTP South American Institute for Fundamental
Research, Brazil

Dear Colleagues,

As Editor-in-Chief of Universe, it is my pleasure to announce that the winners of the 2017 Universe Travel Awards are Dr. Chien-Hsiu Lee, a support astronomer at National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Tokyo, Japan and Dr. Garrett Goon, a postdoctoral researcher at University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands. On behalf of Universe, they will be supported with 800 Swiss Francs towards travel expenses to attend conferences of their choice in 2017.

Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Iorio,
Editor-in-Chief

We are inviting applications for two Travel Awards for postdoctoral students and PhD students to attend a conference of their choice in 2017. The nominations and applications will be assessed by an Evaluation Committee presided by the

Editor-in-Chief,
Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Iorio

Candidates’ Requirements:

–– to submit an abstract on their work
–– Curriculum Vitae
–– Justification letter
–– Letter of support from their mentor.

A general requirement will be that all candidates should be:

–– PhD students or postdoctoral students.
–– They must present their own, original work as an oral presentation
(or poster) at the conference for which the travel award application is
being made.

The Awards will consist of 800 Swiss Francs each.

Please apply by clicking the button above before 24 April 2017.
The winners will be announced by 31 June 2017