A Farewell to Friends

Farewell party for Jann Zosso, Marica Municci, Rico Lo and Rodrigo Panosso.
The farewell party for Jann, Marica, Rico and Rodrigo. Top left: Lorena Magaña Zertuche, Rodrigo Panosso Macedo, Kate Taylor, Simon Maenaut, Gabriel Maia Leão, Rico Lo, Vitor Cardoso and Guangzi Xu; Top right: Rico Lo; Bottom left: Marica Minucci; Bottom right: Guangzi Xu and Jann Zosso.

On an unexpected sunny end of day in Copenhagen, the CoG came together in the courtyard of the Niels Bohr Institute to bid farewell to four members who are about to leave us and embark in a new chapter of their lives.

It is hard to pin point what makes a group of people nice or not nice, good or bad to be around of. Sometimes, the most shy and reserved person can have a tremendous unseen influence on a large number of people. Now, we are saying goodbye not to one but four of those who have been making Strong and the Center of Gravity, the "center of gravity":

Rico Lo, who did pioneering work on black hole spectroscopy, gravitational lensing and perturbation theory… and who still managed to find time to build a mini-LIGO for us.

Marica Minucci, who has been our voice of precision and who worked on nonlinear stability of spacetimes, bilinear products, etc., which are finding such a wide range of applicability, and who led our group meetings in such an excellent way.

Rodrigo Panosso, who is well known for his work on the hyperboloidal framework, on quasinormal modes and black hole pseudospectra of geometries describing black holes in haloes of matter and who’s been with us since day one.

Jann Zosso will leave a strong memory behind him, if anything because of his great speeches, his high-profile work on the memory effect, and his memorable CoG Colloquia organization.

All of them have been amazing colleagues. We can always take two attitudes in life. We can be sad that what was is no more, or we can rejoice that we were given this time together. So we should not be sad. Instead, we should be happy that these colleagues were, and will always be, part of this center and that they brightened our days during these years.

Jann, Marica, Rico and Rodrigo, here’s to you! May you have a bright future!

Aug. 12, 2026, 3:30 p.m.