Andrew Ewald takes the helm of first JCS Guest Editorship.

Abstract

As a graduate student I remember getting the letter – yes, it was many years ago – from the Editor handling my first manuscript. At the time I had little thought for the Editor's role in the process of trying to publish my first paper and was merely pleased that the reviewers were positive and had not asked for much more (as I said, it was a while ago). Now, sitting on the other side of the fence as an Editor of Journal of Cell Science (JCS), I see a very different side to getting published that relatively few scientists experience. In many ways this is unfortunate, because even though no one ever thanks you at meetings for handling their papers, it has been a very enlightening experience for me. I'm not talking about seeing all the great science that passes through JCS, but the actual process of publishing.At the start of 2015, Daniel Billadeau (Mayo Clinic, USA) and David Stephens (Bristol University, UK) crossed over to my side of the fence when they became Editors on JCS. Around the same time, we also considerably revamped our Advisory Board, expanding our expertise in immunology, in vivo imaging and microRNAs, for example, while still maintaining our overall breadth in cell biology. In thinking more about being an Editor, as well as emerging areas of cell biology to focus on, I thought it was about time we did something different, and have now decided to appoint a Guest Editor. However, rather than selecting an established scientist for our first Guest Editorship, I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity for a researcher near the start of their independent career. Benefits of being an Editor include experiencing people glaring at you at meetings, phone calls from authors who are two standard deviations away from happiness and endless emails from the online submission system reminding you that there is a paper in your inbox when you are on holiday. More seriously, I think that it will be an insightful process for the Guest Editor, and hopefully for the readers of JCS as they read about the Guest Editor's experiences. I anticipate that this appointment will bring in new perspectives each year while allowing us to cover emerging topics, and be more flexible as cell biology as a whole changes over time. One such new area that I believe will become increasingly important for many researchers is cell biology in 3D and more complex settings. Traditional 2D cell biology in a dish is still very important. Recent developments, however, in imaging techniques, organoids and other systems are opening up new exciting possibilities for cell biologists to move our analyses and understanding of cellular processes beyond HeLa cells into more realistic physiological settings.I am therefore very pleased to announce that our first Guest Editor will be Andrew Ewald, an Associate Professor of Cell Biology, Oncology and Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD. Originally a physics major, Andrew earned his PhD in biochemistry and molecular biophysics from the California Institute of Technology, studying with Scott Fraser, before completing postdoctoral work with Zena Werb in mammary biology and cancer at the University of California, San Francisco. He joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2008. Andrew studies how cells build organs during normal development and how these same processes contribute to breast cancer metastasis. His laboratory recently identified a unique class of breast cancer cells that lead the process of invasion into surrounding tissues – a first step in cancer metastasis. His students and fellows are currently working to identify molecular strategies to prevent and treat metastatic breast cancer.Andrew will be our Guest Editor for a one-year tenure, beginning on 1 August 2015. We are also pleased to announce that we will be putting together a Special Issue on 3D Cell Biology, to be published in 2016 and edited by Andrew. We have issued a call for papers for this Special Issue, and invite you to submit your best research on all aspects of 3D cell biology for consideration. Keep a look out for our call for papers for more details and the submission deadline.We are excited about the future of cell biology and our focus on this game-changing new aspect of it, and we warmly welcome Andy as our first Guest Editor.