Dear Editor, How have you been?

Moving forward: Editor-in-Chief Theresa Kueckmann reflects on the achievements of the past year and offers a glimpse of the future at Chemistry—An Asian Journal. A young character in a comic strip I recently saw asks this question as he composes a letter to the Editor and is immediately criticized. “What sort of a question is that?”, his older sister wants to know, to which he responds, “Well, editors are sort of human, too, you know!” I had to laugh, because misconceptions about the job of an editor abound, maybe sometimes to the point that our very humanity is questioned. You might imagine an editor working in an office full of books, spending her days with reading and analysis. And yes, there's lots of that, too. But the decisive aspect of the job, and one that often gets overlooked in the public eye, are the relationships behind it. Sure, I spend my days reading manuscripts and referee reports, checking how many submissions the journal has had, how many papers we've published, and how many times articles were downloaded. But behind every paper, every download, every report, there's an individual—an author, a reader, a referee—working hard to do the best science they can, to advance their field and help society find solutions to pressing problems. And the core of my job as an editor is to build relationships to those individuals, the people behind the papers, and cccc. And so I say “Thank you!”, to the authors who choose to publish with us, to the referees who evaluate manuscripts and help authors improve them, to the readers who apply what they read to their own research. Thank you all for being part of the Chemistry—An Asian Journal community! We also work to serve authors by adjusting journal policy to keep up with developments in scientific communication, such as preprints. A preprint is a manuscript version that is shared publicly on a dedicated server before peer review and journal publication. In 2017, Chemistry—An Asian Journal began considering manuscripts that have previously been posted on not-for-profit, subject-based preprint servers, such as arXiv, bioRxiv, or ChemRxiv. The leading preprint server for chemistry, ChemRxiv, is co-owned by the American Chemical Society (ACS), the Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ), the Chinese Chemical Society (CCS), the German Chemical Society (GDCh), and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). Chemistry—An Asian Journal's preprint guidelines (see the Author Guidelines on our webpage) provide detailed advice on integrating preprinting with traditional scholarly publishing. To ensure a fluid submission process authors should keep the following in mind: • Only the submitted version of a manuscript may be posted on a preprint server. • Always declare preprints associated with submitted manuscripts. • No further revisions may be made to a preprint after submission. • Preprints do establish precedence and do require acknowledgement. Accordingly, manuscripts submitted to Chemistry—An Asian Journal must cite relevant preprints that have a bearing on the work, whether posted by the submitting author or another researcher. If you have any questions about preprints or want to know more about the journal's position in other areas, please don't hesitate to get in touch! Although updated policies and highlighting content are important to the journal community, we know that building relationships is best done in person. We've had the pleasure to welcome several visitors to our offices in Weinheim, Germany and Shanghai, China, including Debabrata Maiti from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Tao To of Fudan University in Shanghai, and Qiang Xu from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Osaka. Editors from the journal have attended over 20 conferences in 12 countries on three continents. We look forward to meeting you in person soon, too! We're also expanding our network by actively building relationships to young researchers. As part of this initiative, we are pleased to announce the launch of the journal's Early Career Advisory Board (ECAB). With the ECAB, we seek to increase the visibility and recognition of highly promising young researchers, providing them with support and helping them advance their standing in the scientific community. The ECAB members will have a voice in journal content and development, and we look forward to establishing strong and lasting connections with them. They are all excellent independent researchers with a proven track record of high-quality research who have earned their Ph. D. degree within the last 5–10 years. Please help me in giving these newest members of the Chemistry—An Asian Journal community a warm welcome! You can find more information on the following pages. Despite the countless manuscripts, sheets full of data and seemingly endless streams of referee reports, publishing is a people's business, and editors really are human. I have the privilege of working with a fantastic professional team of editors, enthusiastic editorial board members, engaged societies and inspiring authors, referees and readers. You are the ones that make the journal a success. Thank you for your contributions! Aiko Fukazawa studied chemistry at Kyoto University, where she obtained her B. Eng. degree and M. Eng. degree in 2002 and 2004, respectively, under the supervision of Kohei Tamao. On the way to pursing her doctorate at the same university, she moved to Shigehiro Yamaguchi's research group at Nagoya University as an assistant professor in 2006 and received her Dr. Sci. from Nagoya University in 2008. She was later promoted to an associate professor in 2013. She also spent two months to work with Professor Warren E. Piers at the University of Calgary as a visiting scholar in 2011. Since November 2018, she has been at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS), Kyoto University as a full professor. Her research interests include the development of novel functional organic materials on the basis of physical organic chemistry and main group chemistry. Dan Zhao obtained his Ph. D. degree in inorganic chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Hong-Cai Joe Zhou at Texas A&M University in 2010. After finishing his postdoctoral training at Argonne National Laboratory, he joined the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at National University of Singapore in July 2012 as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in July 2018. His research interests include advanced porous materials and membranes with the applications in clean energy and environmental sustainability. Elizabeth (Liz) New undertook her undergraduate and Masters studies at the University of Sydney with Professor Trevor Hambley before completing her Ph. D. studies in 2010 at the University of Durham, UK with Professor David Parker. Liz was then a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley with Professor Chris Chang. In 2012, she returned to the University of Sydney, where she is currently an associate professor. She held an ARC DECRA from 2012–2014, and a Westpac Research Fellowship from 2016–2019. Her research focusses on the development of small molecule chemical sensors for the study of oxidative stress and metal ions in biology. Her research awards include Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year (2019). Ji Hun Park, after completing his B. S. degree from KAIST, obtained Ph. D. degree from the same institute under the supervision of Prof. Insung S. Choi. He later worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Ravi Kane at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is currently an assistant professor of Science Education (Chemistry Education) at Ewha Womans University. His research interest is biomimetic organic chemistry, including hybrid nanomaterials and biointerfaces. Johannes E. M. N. Klein received his B. Sc. degree from the Universität Dortmund, Germany (renamed to Technische Universität Dortmund) and his M. Sc. degree in chemistry from University College Dublin, Ireland. Following research stays at Harvard University, USA (with Prof. Dr. Tobias Ritter) and the University of York, UK (with Prof. Dr. Richard J. K. Taylor), he obtained his doctorate degree from the Universität Stuttgart, Germany in 2014 under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Bernd Plietker. After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Minnesota, USA in the group of Prof. Dr. Lawrence Que, Jr., he was appointed as an assistant professor in 2017 at the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. His research interests lie at the interface of organic, inorganic, and computational chemistry. (Photo: Sylvia Germes) Junzhi Liu received his B. S. degree in materials chemistry in 2008 (Hebei University of Technology) and M. S. degree in materials science in 2011 (Sichuan University). Afterwards, he joined Prof. Klaus Müllen's group at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research for Ph. D. and obtained his degree in synthetic chemistry in January 2016. In July 2015, he joined Prof. Xinliang Feng's group at Technische Universität Dresden (TU Dresden) as a postdoc. Since July 2017, he was a research group leader at the Chair for Molecular Functional Materials in TU Dresden. In August 2019, Dr. Liu started his independent research group as an assistant professor at the Department of Chemistry in The University of Hong Kong. His current scientific interests include bottom-up organic synthesis of topological carbon nanostructures and their applications in organic electronics. Dr. Liu has been awarded several prizes, such as International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) International Award for Young Chemists (Honorable Mention Award (2017)), Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad in 2015, and European Marie-Curie fellowship in 2011–2014. Geetharani K. obtained her Ph. D. from Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2012. Soon after, she moved to University of Würzburg, Germany for her postdoctoral studies with Prof. Holger Braunschweig as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow. She began her independent research career as an assistant professor at department of inorganic and physical chemistry, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, India, in 2016. She is a recipient of DST-Inspire Faculty Award. She has also been awarded Young Associate-Indian Academy of Sciences, INSA-Young Scientist medal, and NASI-Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award. Her research interests are in the areas of catalysis, main group and organometallic chemistry. Kyungtae Kang is an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Chemistry at Kyung Hee University since 2016. He received his B. S. in chemistry (2007) from KAIST, Korea and his Ph. D. (2013) in chemistry from the same institute under the supervision of Insung S. Choi and Yoonkey Nam. After completing his doctoral study, he conducted postdoctoral research (2014–2016) at Harvard University with George M. Whitesides. His research interests include protein/peptide chemistry, bioorganic chemistry, and neurochemistry. Lin Yuan received his B. Sc. in chemical engineering from the University of South China in 2006 and his Ph. D. in chemistry from Hunan University in 2013. He then carried out postdoctoral studies with Professor Young-Tae Chang at NUS. In 2012, he started his academic career at Hunan University as an assistant professor. He is now a full professor (2017) and runs a laboratory at the same university focusing on functional fluorescent dyes/fluorescent probes towards various biological systems. Po-Heng Lin was born in Taipei, Taiwan. He studied chemistry at National Chung Cheng University, graduating in 2002. He then studied at Department of Nuclear Science, National Tsing Hua University, under the guidance of Prof. Chu-Fang Wang, obtaining his MSc in Analytical Chemistry in 2004. He served in the army before he went aboard to study. His PhD graduate studies were carried out at the University of Ottawa, Canada and he obtained his PhD in 2012. Aside from Chemistry, he also learned snowboarding and skating from his supervisor, Prof. Muralee Murugesu. His postdoctoral appointment was at California Institute of Technology, under the guidance of Prof. Theodor Agapie from 2012 to 2014. In August 2014, Po-Heng became an assistant professor at National Chung Hsing University, followed by associate professor in February of 2018. His research focuses on the design and synthesis of pure lanthanide metal clusters with record energy barriers for higher density information storage materials. Moreover, he is also interested in understanding how to self-assemble the lanthanide metal clusters logically in order to further discover novel molecular materials. Satoru Hiroto graduated from Kyoto University in 2004. He received his Ph.D. from Kyoto University in 2009. He also worked as JSPS research fellow from April 2007 to March 2009. In 2008, he moved to Nagoya University, and became an Assistant Professor there in 2009. He visited University of Virginia as a visiting researcher from August 2015 to February 2016. Since 2018, he has been an Associate Professor at Kyoto University. His research projects are mainly focused on synthesis of novel π-conjugated molecules with strained conformation and development of their functions derived from curved structures. Thomas Douglas Bennett gained a 1st class M. Sc. in the Natural Sciences Tripos at the University of Cambridge, in 2008. His Ph. D. was supervised by Professor Anthony K. Cheetham in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at Cambridge, before he spent one year as a A-level school teacher in Chemistry. Three years as a University of Cambridge Research Fellow followed, before he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2016. Tom has published over 80 peer reviewed papers, and received several recent awards for his work on the interface of glass, and hybrid materials science, on non-crystalline metal-organic frameworks. These include the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Science Impact Award (2018), the Woldemar A. Weyl award for glass science (2019) and a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Chemistry (2019). He is the current chair of the Royal Society of Interest Group on Porous Materials.

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