Vasco Serra Cardoso, a Master's student of Astrophysics and Space Instrumentation at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra (FCTUC), has been awarded the "Pedro Nunes" prize for the best Iberian Master's thesis in Planetary Science and Exploration by the Europlanet Society.
The thesis "Collisional Evolution of Jupiter Trojans" was co-supervised by Nuno Peixinho, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA) and the Department of Physics - FCTUC, and Paula Benavidez, a professor at the Department of Physics, Systems Engineering and Signal Theory (University of Alicante, Spain).
The Abraham Zacut Prize (for the best doctoral thesis) and the Pedro Nunes Prize (for the best master's thesis), named after the two great Spanish and Portuguese astronomers who lived and worked in the two countries, represent Iberian synergy and cooperation.