When a scientific journal adds a new associate editor, that change means more for readers than just a tweak to the masthead. New associate editors bring new experiences, new perspectives, and new ideas to their publications. Get to know some of ACS’ latest editors and learn what unique gifts they’ll be bringing to their respective […]
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Zhiyong Lou, ACS Infectious Diseases
What do you hope to bring to your journal?
Structural biology is becoming a powerful and fundamental tool to understand the inhibition mechanisms of antivirals and antibacterials. This information would help us to develop a rational design for these compounds and optimize them to achieve better specificity, inhibitory effects, and clinical potential, as exemplified by the striking case of drugs in the market such as Zanamivir. The increasing participation of structural biologists would prompt the communication and cooperation with scientists in chemistry and infectious diseases research field within ACS Infectious Diseases community.
Describe your current research.
Our research is focused on the molecular mechanism of entry, replication, and pathogenesis of emerging and re-emerging high-pathogenic viruses, as well as the development of highly-active antivirals. Recently, we are working on high-pathogenic RNA viruses that result in severe pandemics worldwide, including Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever virus, Hantavirus, Hepatitis C virus, Hand-Foot-and-Mouth Disease virus and influenza virus. Our goal is discovering new receptor/entry factor for virus entry, dissecting the molecular mechanism of virus lifecycle through structural biology view, elucidating virus-host interaction, and developing highly active antiviral compounds with great clinical potential, through the combination of biophysical, virological and chemical-biological technics.
What are the major challenges facing your field today?
Resistance to currently available antivirals or antibacterials requires further understanding of the actions of pathogen-encoded proteins and inhibition mechanisms of exogenous reagents. Moreover, the lack of molecular understanding of the lifecycles of emerging, re-emerging and neglected pathogens significantly retard the discovery of reagents against these pathogens. More structural biology information is required to gain fundamental knowledge of pathogens and provide a solid basis to understand how to combat them.
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Kazunori Kataoka, ACS Nano
What do you hope to bring to your journal?
ACS Nano is a forum for interdisciplinary research focusing on cutting-edge nanoscience and nanotechnology. I hope I can improve the translation of nanoscience to clinical medicine, making the “In-Body Hospital of Nano” a reality.
Describe your current research.
My major research field is nanomedicine. Particularly, developing supramolecular nanodevices for the delivery of drugs, genes, oligos, and imaging probes to target site of the body. My future goal is to evolve nanodevices to have multi-functionality of sensing, processing, and operational ability, working ultimately as nanomachines to make the “In-Body Hospital” a reality.
What are the major challenges facing your field today?
There have already been many nanodevices targeting cancer based on hyper-permeability of vasculatures in cancer, the so-called EPR effect. Nevertheless, many nanodevices developed so far based on the EPR effect are now encountering difficulties in clinical translation. Definitely, we need a breakthrough idea base in nano to enhance translocation of nanodevices from circulating blood to tumor tissue crossing vascular barrier by active transport. Tumor penetration of nanodevices is another challenge in this field. Besides cancer targeting, crossing the blood-brain barrier (BBB) is a big challenge, and we welcome innovative ideas to tackle it.
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Yidong Huang, ACS Photonics
What do you hope to bring to your journal?
I hope my experience on optoelectronic devices can bring ACS Photonics a different viewpoint.
Describe your current research.
I research optical devices with nanostructures, such as photonic crystal and optomechanical crystal, surface plasmon polariton (SPP), as well as free electron radiation. Some achievements include ultra-compact optical switches, integrated SPP sensors, quantum light sources, super diffraction lithography, an integrated optical vortices emitter with tunable orbital angular momentum (OAM), integrated free-electron light sources, etc.
What are the major challenges facing your field today?
Introducing productization of the various new functional optoelectronic devices.
Do you have a recent paper in an ACS journal that you’d like to highlight?
True Single-Photon Stimulated Four-Wave Mixing
ACS Photonics, 2017, 4 (4), pp 746–753
DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.6b01020
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Jelena Vuckovic, ACS Photonics
What do you hope to bring to your journal?
My expertise in quantum photonics and nanophotonics.
Describe your current research.
Experimental, theoretical, and computational quantum photonics and nanophotonics. Examples of current topics of our interest include Inverse design of nanophotonics; quantum photonic technologies based on color centers in diamond and silicon-carbide; integrated nanophotonics and quantum photonics; and CMOS compatible light sources.
What are the major challenges facing your field today?
In nanophotonics and optics, we have been working for many years with suboptimal structures that are large in footprints, sensitive to the environment (fabrication, temperature), inefficient, and impractical. Recent developments in optimization algorithms and computational hardware have enabled designs of many devices that beat state-of-the-art regarding footprint, robustness, and efficiency. The current challenge is scaling this up to large photonic circuits. In quantum technologies, the biggest challenge is identifying the right quantum systems that are scalable, have efficient optical interfaces, long coherence times, and where a large number of nontrivial operations can be performed per coherence time. Such systems would be a platform suitable to implement an equivalent to transistors in classical computing.
Do you have a recent paper in an ACS journal that you’d like to highlight?
Inverse Design and Demonstration of a Compact on-Chip Narrowband Three-Channel Wavelength Demultiplexer
ACS Photonics, Article ASAP
DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.7b00987
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Jinlong Gong, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering
What do you hope to bring to your journal?
My academic and editorial experience in heterogeneous catalysis and surface science could bring a new vision to the journal. I will help the journal constitute/update the aims and scopes and identify high-profile authors in my field to invite for submissions. I also hope to promote the journal on many occasions, particularly in the Asian-Pacific Region, and connect the editorial offices in China and U.S.
Describe your current research.
My research interests focus on catalytic conversions of green energy, utilization of carbon oxides, development of new technologies for conversion of light hydrocarbons, as well as the design, synthesis, and characterization of nanostructured materials.
What are the major challenges facing your field today?
Our field and society face great challenges ranging from a fragile natural ecological environment to resource constraints. There is a big gap between the strong desire for the development of alternative sustainable technologies from academia and the insufficient incentives from industries. Another challenge is to facilitate the scale-up process to reduce or eliminate the use or generation of one or more hazardous substances or materials.
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Maksym Kovalenko, Chemistry of Materials
What do you hope to bring to your journal?
I hope to serve Chemistry of Materials in the following regards: To ensure high quality standards in the fields of solid-state chemistry and inorganic chemistry; To further enhance the visibility and impact of the journal; To make sure that in hot topics such as lead halide perovskites or battery materials, minimal amount of “junk science” gets through the editorial selection and reviewing process.
Describe your current research.
My research concerns the following topics: 1. Synthesis, properties, and applications of metal halide perovskite nanocrystals and single crystals; 2. Colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals: synthesis, surface chemistry, self-assembly, optoelectronic applications; 3. Exploratory synthesis of new semiconductor compounds, foremost perovskites and perovskite-like; 4. novel materials for batteries (Li-ion and post-Li-ion)
What are the major challenges facing your field today?
The major challenge is hot topics such as lead halide perovskites lead to an unprecedented amount of low quality/junk/pseudo-science that gets published. This eventually discredits the field and misguides the scientists and policy-makers. High submission volumes in this field make it increasingly difficult to sort out good manuscripts from the rest. A similar situation occurs in the field of battery materials. On the other hand, this field (perovskites) has an enormous positive impact, as it motivates the search for new materials and functionalities, and had changed our view on how the useful properties emerge from the atomic arrangement and bonding.
Do you have a recent paper in an ACS journal that you’d like to highlight?
Luminescent and Photoconductive Layered Lead Halide Perovskite Compounds Comprising Mixtures of Cesium and Guanidinium Cations
Inorg. Chem., 2017, 56 (19), pp 11552–11564
DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.7b01204
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Han-Bo-Ram Lee, Chemistry of Materials
What do you hope to bring to your journal?
I have been a researcher in the fields of atomic layer deposition (ALD) and related surface science in the last 13 years. As an Associate Editor of Chemistry of Materials, I hope to bring my expertise to this position. Also, I want to provide better papers which are more straightforward, easier to understand, and scientifically more impact to all of the readers.
Describe your current research.
My current research interests and topics are focused on understanding and controlling surface chemistry and reactions, and applying this knowledge to various applications of which properties could be improved by functionalization of a surface from nanoscopic to macroscopic ranges. We utilize ALD to realize controls and functionalization of surface properties. We are interested in four applications: electronic textiles; hydrophobic surfaces; 2D materials; and semiconductor devices.
What are the major challenges facing your field today?
Since ALD is one of the important tools to realize nanoscale fabrication, many researchers are now adopting ALD for their specific purposes. Due to the surface-dependent growth mechanism of ALD, chemical reactions of ALD precursors on each surface should be understood. However, many fundamentals behind ALD reactions still require investigation.
Do you have a recent paper in an ACS journal that you’d like to highlight?
Recent Advances in Atomic Layer Deposition
Chem. Mater., 2016, 28 (7), pp 1943–1947
DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.6b00673
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Shiyong Liu, Chemistry of Materials
What do you hope to bring to your journal?
As an Associate Editor of Chemistry of Materials, I wish to serve as a bridge between traditional organic chemists, polymer chemists, and materials chemists and make the journal even more attractive to them. I would like to highlight the power of new and rediscovered “old” chemistry, in-depth mechanistic studies, and extensive (micro)structural analysis within the area of organic materials chemistry.
Describe your current research.
We are a polymer and soft matter chemistry group focusing on the synthesis of small molecule building blocks, functional polymers, and self-assembled nanostructures for targeted applications in chemical biology, sensing/diagnostics, and biomaterials. Integrating the tools, techniques, and knowledge of organic chemistry, polymer chemistry, and supramolecular chemistry, we are fabricating responsive colloidal nanostructures and biomimetic far-from-equilibrium systems, and exploring emerging chemistry in self-assembled aggregates with an eye towards understanding the origin of life.
What are the major challenges facing your field today?
Facing the era of ever-expanding knowledge and subdisciplines, the field of polymer and soft matter chemistry has to embrace the progress and challenges of other fields, including biological, energy and environmental science. It is challenging to keep track of all emerging discoveries in closely relevant subfields and create convergence within our field.
Do you have a recent paper in an ACS journal that you’d like to highlight?
Photoregulated Cross-Linking of Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticle (SPION) Loaded Hybrid Nanovectors with Synergistic Drug Release and Magnetic Resonance (MR) Imaging Enhancement
Macromolecules, 2017, 50 (3), pp 1113–1125
DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.6b02162
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Kavirayani Prasad, Organic Letters
What do you hope to bring to your journal?
Organic Letters is the premium journal of organic chemistry. I strive to maintain the reputation and standards of the journal and wish to add to my expertise in total synthesis of natural products and developing synthetic methods.
Describe your current research.
Our work is mainly focused on the total synthesis of natural products of therapeutic significance and development of new synthetic strategies.
What are the major challenges facing your field today?
In spite of an array of advances in various metal and non-metal mediated organic transformations, total synthesis of natural products and analogs of medicinal importance has remained a task far from perfection. Nature continues to challenge synthetic organic chemists with structural complexity, and the proven importance of these compounds in drug discovery offers enormous avenues. I strongly believe that one of the major challenges is the necessity for a re-oriented approach towards the efficient synthesis of complex organic molecules. With the lessons learned from understanding the nature’s way of synthesis, it is appropriate to reform the synthesis which will advance the drug discovery progression to a higher pedestal.
Do you have a recent paper in an ACS journal that you’d like to highlight?
Total Synthesis of the Bis-silyl Ether of (+)-15-epi-Aetheramide A
J. Org. Chem., 2017, 82 (1), pp 438–460
DOI: 10.1021/acs.joc.6b02535 ***
