Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the Universe 2022 Best Paper Award for research and review articles published in Universe from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021. One review and one research article will receive an award each. The papers will be selected after thorough evaluation by the journal Award Committee led by the EiC, Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Iorio and the winners will be announced in March 2023.

Eligibility for the award:

– Papers published in Universe from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021;
– 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 thefollowing criteria (data source: Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics)):

– Scientific merit and broad impact;
– Originality of the research objectives and/or the ideas presented;
– Creativity of the study design or uniqueness of the approaches and concepts;
– Clarity of presentation;
– Citation and download rates in 2022.

Prizes:

– One review award: CHF 500 (Swiss francs) and a chance to publish a free paper in Universe in 2023;
– One research article award: CHF 500 (Swiss francs) and a chance to publish a free paper in Universe in 2023.
– Each winner will also receive an electronic certificate.

The winners will be announced on the journal website in March 2023.

Kind regards,
Universe Editorial Office

Dear Colleagues,

To honor the excellent papers published in the Special Issue “The Casimir Effect: From a Laboratory Table to the Universe”, we are pleased to launch a new Best Paper Award. The winning paper will receive an award. The winning paper will be selected after a thorough evaluation by an Award Committee consisting of senior scholars from the Universe Editorial Board.

Eligibility for the awards:

– ONLY papers published in the Special Issue “The Casimir Effect: From a Laboratory Table to the Universe” will be considered.

– Papers published by Guest Editors will not be granted this award.

Selection Criteria:

Papers will be selected by the journal Award Committee according to the following criteria:

– Scientific merit and broad impact;

– Relevance to the SI and journal scope;

– Originality of the research objectives and/or the ideas presented (for research article);

– Creativity of the study design or uniqueness of the approaches and concepts (for research article);

– Comprehensiveness will be considered for review articles;

– Citations (data source: Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics)) and download rates in 2022.

Prizes:

The winner (corresponding author) will receive the following:

– 500 CHF;

– An electronic certificate.

The winning paper will be announced on the journal website in February 2023. If you want to know more details about the Special Issue or submit a paper, please follow this link:
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/universe/special_issues/TCEFALTU

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Universe 2021 Outstanding Reviewer Award. The Universe Editorial Board and Editorial Team would like to gratefully acknowledge the time and energy dedicated by reviewers in checking the manuscripts submitted to Universe. It is due to their e orts that the high quality of the journal and quick turnaround are maintained.

The following 10 reviewers have been selected to receive Universe 2021 Outstanding Reviewer Award for the quantity, timeliness, and quality of their reviews in 2021:

Amit Kashi
Ariel University, Ariel, Israel

Dominik Elsaesser
Technical University of Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

Isaac Tutusaus
Instituto de Ciencias del Espacio, Barcelona, Spain

Jose A.R. Cembranos
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Kazuharu Bamba
Fukushima University, Fukushima, Japan

Przemyslaw Malkiewicz
National Centre for Nuclear Research, Warsaw, Poland

Szymon Piotr Harabasz
Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

Theocharis Kosmas
University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece

Viktor Toth
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Canada

Vitor De Souza
Universidade de São Paulodisabled, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Each of the winners will receive the following:

• An electronic certificate;
• A chance to publish a paper free of charge in Universe by the end of 2022.

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Universe 2021 Best Paper Awards. All papers published from 2015 to 2020 in Universe were considered for the awards. After a thorough evaluation of the originality and significance of the papers, citations, and downloads, the three winning papers, which were nominated by the Editor-in-Chief, have been selected.

Article:

Nonsingular Black Holes in ƒ (R) Theories
By: Gonzalo J. Olmo and Diego Rubiera-Garcia
Universe 2015, 1(2), 173–185

Is it no Longer Necessary to Test Cosmologies with Type Ia Supernovae?
By: Ram Gopal Vishwakarma and Jayant V. Narlikar
Universe 2018, 4(6), 73

A Universe that Does Not Know the Time
By: João Magueijo and Lee Smolin
Universe 2019, 5(3), 84

Review:

Seeing Black Holes: From the Computer to the Telescope
By: Jean-Pierre Luminet
Universe 2018, 4(8), 86

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

We believe the above papers represent valuable contributions to Universe and the scientific literature. We warmly congratulate the winners.

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Universe 2020 Best Paper Awards for Special Issue. All papers published in Special Issue “Universe: 5th Anniversary” were considered for the awards. After a thorough evaluation of the originality and significance of the papers, citations, and downloads, the two winning papers, which were nominated by the Editor-in-Chief and Award Committee, have been selected.

The Montevideo Interpretation: How the Inclusion of a Quantum Gravitational Notion of Time Solves the Measurement Problem
By Rodolfo Gambini and Jorge Pullin
Universe 2020, 6(12), 236.

Closed Timelike Curves, Singularities and Causality: A Survey from Gödel to Chronological Protection
By Jean-Pierre Luminet
Universe 2021, 7(1), 12.

The authors will receive an award of 500 CHF and a certificate. We believe the above papers represent valuable contributions to Universe and the scientific literature.

Kind regards,
Universe Editorial Office

Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Universe 2020 Outstanding Reviewer Awards. The Universe Editorial Board and Editorial Team would like to gratefully acknowledge the time and energy dedicated by reviewers in checking the manuscripts submitted to Universe. It is due to their efforts that the high quality of the journal and quick turnaround is maintained.

The following reviewers have been selected to receive Universe 2020 Outstanding Reviewer Awards for the quantity, timeliness and quality of their reviews in 2020:

Kazuharu Bamba
Fukushima University, Fukushima, Japan

Sunny Vagnozzi
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Aharon Davidson
Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel

Zhoujian Cao
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Ramona Vogt
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, USA

Daniele Gregoris
Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, China

Alexei A. Starobinsky
Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Moscow, Russia

Tiberiu Harko
University College London, London, UK

Andrey A. Grib
Herzen State Pedagogical University, Petersburg, Russia

Martin Bojowald
Penn State University, State College, USA

Each of winners will receive the following:
– A certificate;
– A chance to publish a paper free-of-charge in Universe by the end of 2021.

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