EIC: Fabrizio Lombardi

Dear Colleagues:

Effective January 1 2015, I have started my duties as the Editor in Chief (EIC) of the IEEE Transactions of Nanotechnology (TNano). These are exciting times. TNano is now in its 10^th year of publication; over the last decade, nanotechnology has experienced a tremendous growth and its outreach is pervasive in many areas, both in the sciences as well as engineering.

As an IEEE sponsored periodical, TNano has been at the forefront of nano-engineering and its publication activities. In 2014, TNano received slightly more than 600 papers as submissions; at an acceptance rate of nearly 35%, Tnano is well regarded as a solid peer-reviewed publication. Under the leadership of the IEEE Nanotechnology Council (NTC), I am happy to report that TNano has a new and improved web presence; its web page can be found at https://tnano.org/. This web site has a multitude of informative items; I encourage everyone interested in TNano to visit it.

Next, let me elaborate on the operational organization of TNano. With support from the NTC leadership, an administrative assistant is available to answer queries related to TNano; her name is Allyson King and her email address is aking@allenpress.com. As EIC, I manage a two-tier Editorial Board of distinguished colleagues.  Senior Editors are responsible for technical areas; upon receiving a submission, a Senior Editor selects an Associate Editor who then coordinates its review. This arrangement allows the involvement of two distinguished researchers when making a decision on a manuscript. As EIC, my goals for the review process are realistic, yet ambitious; a further reduction in the average review delay (from submission to first decision) while still providing a professional and comprehensive review to the authors, is well within our reach. In this respect, the Editorial Board has been considerably enlarged. Four Senior Editors have been added; they have been elevated to this important role as an appreciation for their distinguished services. These outstanding volunteers (with email addresses) are:

Massimo DeVittorio massimo.devittorio@unisalento.it

Lixin Dong ldong@egr.msu.edu

Jun Li junli@ksu.edu

Antonio Martinez a.e.martinez@swansea.ac.uk

At the same time, we have added 17 new Associate Editors to TNano; their names and email addresses are given below:

Anghel Costin costin.anghel@isep.fr

Shih-Chi Chen scchen@mae.cuhk.edu.hk

Murali Krishna Ghatkesar m.k.ghatkesar@tudelft.nl

Saif Islam sislam@ucdavis.edu

Xiuling  Li xiuling@illinois.edu

Nicolae-Coriolan Panoiu n.panoiu@ucl.ac.uk

Luca Pierantoni l.pierantoni@univpm.it

Salvatore Pontarelli salvatore.pontarelli@uniroma2.it

Samugawa samukawa@ifs.tohoku.ac.jp

Ashwin A. Seshia aas41@cam.ac.uk

K.Suganuma  suganuma@sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp

Christof Teuscher teuscher@pdx.edu

Luis Guillermo Villanueva guillermo.villanueva@epfl.ch

Pak Wong pak@email.arizona.edu,

Tak Sing Wong  tswong@engr.psu.edu

Alice Haixia (Alice) Zhang zhang-alice@pku.edu.cn

Zhaohui Zhong zzhong@umich.edu

The biographical notes and areas of expertise of all Board members can be found at the TNano web page; I encourage you to visit to get a better appreciation of the depth and diversity of the Editors. Moreover, I envision additional editorial appointments in the next months to enlarge the Board and the representation of different geographic areas, thus further spanning the publication activities of TNano on a worldwide basis. As Editor-In-Chief, I continue to seek the best articles with diversity of nano-related topics and geographic affiliations to further strength the technical coverage of TNano. I am committed to have a periodical that matches the technical objective of the IEEE NTC and with the highest impact on its community-at-large.

TNano is an integral activity of the IEEE NTC and therefore, it is also closely aligned with the flagship event sponsored by the IEEE NTC, namely the IEEE International Conference on Nanotechnology (NANO). In its 13th venue, the 2015 event will be held in Rome (Italy) on July 27-30, 2015; more information on this event can be found at http://www.ieeenano15.org/. As in the past, selected papers from NANO2015 will be considered for publication in TNano. As per IEEE regulations, a manuscript submitted to TNano must have substantial new material compared to the article published in the Proceedings of a professional event, such as a conference, symposium or workshop.

A further item that may interest our readership is the increased emphasis that TNano will be placing on Special Sections in its future production schedule. In addition to NANO2015, two Special Sections have already been approved and the Call-for-Papers (CFPs) can be found at the TNano web site. The first Special Section is jointly with IEEE Transactions on Computers; this Special Section seeks original manuscripts on “Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI and Nanotechnology Systems”. The second Special Section draws its coverage from the NTC-sponsored “Nanotechnology for Instrumentation and Measurement” Workshop, July 24-25 2015 (more information on this event can be found at http://nanofim2015.unisalento.it/ ). I would like to point out that the CFPs are open to all manuscripts with technical material relevant to the specified topical coverage. It is my plan to enlarge the number and quality of Special Sections; so if interested, potential Guest Editors (GEs) are always welcome and should contact me for more detailed information on the due process for submitting a proposal for a Special Section. You will find me helpful in ensuring that your proposal will be evaluated fairly and speedy.

Over the last few weeks, I have been receiving many emails from potential reviewers offering their services; while this is admirable (and the suitable course of action is to directly contact an Associate Editor for inclusion in the pool, not the EIC), the best option is to submit a manuscript to TNano and solidly contribute to its technical mission, because then you will be automatically included in the database.

In conclusion, I am very excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for IEEE TNano. A positive slope is evident by all accounts and I warmly extend an invitation to directly and actively participate either as an author, or a proposer of a Special Section, or a reviewer. Do not hesitate to contact me as you will find me very receptive to innovative themes and initiatives. Finally, I look forward to meet you in person at many NTC-sponsored professional events that we may both attend; also on these occasions, I am open to comments and suggestions from the readership. After all, a Transactions is as good as its constituencies and I am committed to ensure that TNano will meet all your professional and technical requirements and needs.

Fabrizio Lombardi

EIC, IEEE TNano

Northeastern University

Boston, MA 02115 USA

lombardi@ece.neu.edu