A New Era

Abstract

Time for a change: AsianJOC is soon turning 10, so there will be several things to look forward to this year, to celebrate this milestone. It is a new era for the journal, as the Editorial and International Advisory Boards are welcoming new members, based on the international organic chemistry community of the journal. The new Editorial Board members are also introduced here. We live in a dynamic world that keeps changing and providing us with surprises. It is amazing how technology can help us nowadays and that is great! I must ask you, though: How open to changes are you? Are you looking forward to having a diverse scientific environment? What are you doing to improve the world we live in? AsianJOC now has a new Co-Chair replacing Professor Sung Ho Kang (Figure 1), who has been instrumental in the development of the journal from the very beginning. We are very grateful to Professor Kang for all of his contributions to journal development and we would like to thank him for his fantastic service and dedication during his two terms as Co-Chair. He will continue to represent the journal as an Honorary Board member. Without further ado, it is our pleasure to introduce the new Co-Chair of AsianJOC, Professor Sungwoo Hong (Figure 1). We are delighted and honored to have the opportunity to work with him and we were very happy to hear that he shares our thoughts: “I am honored that I will be joining as Co-Chair and I look forward to our future collaboration.” Sungwoo Hong is a Professor at the Department of Chemistry at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST, South Korea) and an Associate Director of the Center for Catalytic Hydrocarbon Functionalizations at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea). He graduated from Seoul National University, where he earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees. He obtained his PhD degree under the supervision of Prof. Steven M. Weinreb at Pennsylvania State University. After undertaking his postdoctoral course with Prof. E. J. Corey at Harvard University, he joined GlaxoSmithKline (GSK, USA) as a Principal Scientist in 2006. In 2009, he returned to South Korea and started his independent work at KAIST. His research group focuses on the development of new catalytic transformations, site-selective C−H functionalization, and medicinal chemistry. Former AsianJOC Co-Chair, Professor Sung Ho Kang (left), and new Co-Chair, Professor Sungwoo Hong (right) The new era of AsianJOC is also being further reflected in the Editorial Board, whose members actively help us in developing the journal and keeping the standards of the journal as high as possible, as well as in the International Advisory Board (IAB) of the journal. As such, at the recent EB and IAB renewal, we considered several factors alongside research quality and journal support: continuity, research fields, and reflecting the community that serve. We hope that the changes will send a positive message to the organic chemistry community and to researchers from all over the world. Please join me in welcoming the new Editorial Board and International Advisory Board members of AsianJOC! You can find out more about the 9 new members of the EB below. 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. She has also been an ECAB member of Chemistry–An Asian Journal since January 2020. Eun Jin Cho received her Chemistry undergraduate degree in 2002 and her Master′s degree in 2004 from the Seoul National University, South Korea, under the direction of Professor Eun Lee. She earned her PhD degree in 2008 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, under the direction of Professor Daesung Lee, and undertook postdoctoral training with Professor Stephen L. Buchwald at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2011, she returned to South Korea to begin her independent career at Hanyang University (ERICA) as an Assistant Professor. She moved to Chung-Ang University as an Associate Professor in 2015 and was promoted to full professor in 2019. Research in the Cho group is centered on development of new chemical reactions and the synthesis of functional materials. She has also been an ECAB member of AsianJOC since January 2020. Gong Chen received his Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Nanjing University. He earned his PhD degree in 2004 from Columbia University, where he worked with Prof. Dalibor Sames on protein modification and fluorescence sensing of enzyme activity. After postdoctoral research on the synthesis of peptides and glycoproteins with Prof. Samuel Danishefsky at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, he began his independent career as an assistant professor at the Pennsylvania State University in 2008. He moved to Nankai University in 2015. His research interests are focused on the development of new C−H functionalization reactions and their applications in synthetic and biological studies of complex carbohydrates and peptides. Hirohisa Ohmiya received his PhD degree from Kyoto University in 2007 under the supervision of Professor Koichiro Oshima. He spent one year as a JSPS postdoctoral fellow in the group of Professor Timothy F. Jamison at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2008, he became an Assistant Professor at Hokkaido University, working with Professor Masaya Sawamura. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2010. Since 2017, he has been a Professor at Kanazawa University. He is acting as JST PRESTO Researcher (2019–2023). His research focuses on development of organic synthesis for new catalysis, reactions and molecules. Kazuaki Ishihara received his PhD degree in Engineering in 1991 from Nagoya University, Japan under the supervision of Professor Hisashi Yamamoto. After postdoctoral training with Professor E. J. Corey at Harvard University, USA, he returned to the Yamamoto group at Nagoya University as an Assistant Professor in 1992, was then promoted to an associate professor in 1997, and began his independent career as a full Professor in 2002 at Nagoya University. Among numerous awards, he received the Chemical Society of Japan Award for Young Chemists (1996), the JSPS Prize (from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 2005), the BCSJ Award (2005), the IBM Japan Science Prize (2007), the Mukaiyama Award (2009), the Inoue Prize for Science (2011), the Synthetic Organic Chemistry Award, Japan (2016), the Chemical Society of Japan Award (2018), and several Asian Core Program (ACP) Lectureship Awards. He has also been an International Advisory Board member of AsianJOC until December 2020. Martin Banwell attended the Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) from which he received his PhD in 1979. After a post-doctoral year in the US he moved to the University of Adelaide, then to the Universities of Auckland and Melbourne before joining the Australian National University (ANU) in 1995. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and has received various awards from the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, the most recent being the 2014 H. G. Smith Memorial Medal. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2018 and received the 2019 Ryoji Noyori ACES Award in late 2019. At this time he also became Honorary Professor at the ANU and, in early 2020, assumed the Directorship of the newly created Institute for Advanced and Applied Chemical Synthesis (IAACS) of Jinan University located in Guangdong Province, Southern China. The IAACS is a research-based entity that is being funded from a range central, provincial and local government sources in China. He has also been an International Advisory Board member of AsianJOC until December 2020. Ohyun Kwon, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA, received her B.S. and M.S. degrees from Seoul National University in 1991 and 1993, respectively. After obtaining her PhD from Columbia University in 1998, and a postdoctoral stint at Harvard University, Professor Kwon began her independent career at UCLA in 2001. Her research involves the development of phosphine-catalyzed reactions and their applications to natural product synthesis and chemical biology. She has played key roles in establishing phosphine catalysis as one of the main areas of research in organocatalysis, and is recognized as one of the leaders in the field. Most recently, her group has initiated a new program: redox-based radical chemistry involving alkene C−C bond scission. Pier Giorgio (PG) Cozzi completed his M.S. degree at Milan University (Italy) in 1989 under the supervision of Professor Cesare Gennari. After four years as a Research Associate in Lausanne University (Switzerland) under the direction of Carlo Floriani, he was appointed as an Assistant Professor at Bologna University in 1994. He was then promoted to Associate and full Professor at the same university. He received the C.I.N.M.P.I.S. award from Italian Chemical Society in 2007, a JSPS fellowship from Chemistry Society of Japan in 2013, the Piero Pino Gold Medal Award from Italian Chemical Society in 2015, and the Gònzales–Ciamician Award, from the Royal Spanish Society, in 2018. In 2019, PG was nominated as a Chemistry Europe Fellow from the European Chemical Society. He has also been an International Advisory Board member of AsianJOC until December 2020. Vandana Bhalla received her PhD from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar in 1998 under the supervision of Prof. Harjit Singh. In 1999, she joined BBK DAV College Amritsar as a lecturer and in 2002, she went to Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, as a JSPS postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Sotaro Miyano. In 2004, she joined the research group of Prof. Takuzo Aida as a JST researcher in Tokyo University, Tokyo. In 2006, she joined the Department of Chemistry, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar as an Assistant Professor and currently she is an Associate Professor at the same institute. Her research interest focuses on the development of fluorescent supramolecular assemblies for sensing and catalysis/photocatalysis. For her contributions in chemical sciences, she was awarded the Thomson Reuters Research Excellence India Citation Award (2015), and the Bhagya-Tara Award (2015) by Panjab University, Chandigarh, the Rajib Goyal Award (2018) by Kurukshetra University, the First Shiv Nath Rai Kohli Mid-Career Best Scientist Award (2018), the CRSI Bronze medal (2015) by Chemical Research Society of India (CRSI) and the Prof. S.S. Sandhu endowment award (2017) by Indian Chemical Society. She was also awarded the prestigious INSA teacher Award (2020) by Indian National Science Academy (INSA), New Delhi.