Current Opinion in Gastroenterology was launched in 1985. It is one of a successful series of review journals whose unique format is designed to provide a systematic and critical assessment of the literature as presented in the many primary journals. The field of gastroenterology is divided into 12 sections that are reviewed once a year. Each section is assigned a Section Editor, a leading authority in the area, who identifies the most important topics at that time. Here we are pleased to introduce one of the Section Editors for this issue. SECTION EDITORS Fergus ShanahanFergus ShanahanFergus Shanahan is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at University College Cork (UCC), National University of Ireland. Born and educated in Dublin, he attended medical school at University College Dublin, Ireland, where he graduated with honours in 1977. After internship and residency in internal medicine in Dublin, he did a two-year fellowship in clinical immunology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, followed by a two-year fellowship in gastroenterology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA. Following completion of his fellowship at UCLA, he was appointed to the faculty there, rising to the rank of Associate Professor before making the decision, in 1993, to return to his native Ireland. Together with colleagues from several departments and different faculties within University College Cork and Teagasc (a research agency of the Irish Ministry of Food and Agriculture), Dr Shanahan led a team of clinicians, clinician-scientists, and basic scientists to successfully compete for seed funding from Science Foundation Ireland to create a multi-disciplinary research center, the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre, which investigates host-microbe interactions in the gut in health and disease. Under Dr Shanahan's directorship, the center now has a membership of 168 staff, scientists, and students and has expanded its funding and research base by securing research alliances with indigenous and multinational companies within the food and pharmaceutical sectors. Dr Shanahan has published more than 450 scientific papers and several on the medical humanities and has co-edited several books. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland, Canada, and the United Kingdom as well as of the American College of Physicians. He served as President of the Irish Society of Gastroenterology from 2007–2009. He was recently named to the “Irish Life Science 50” a list of the top 50 Irish and Irish Americans in the life science industry. His interests are in mucosal immunology, gut microbiota, inflammatory bowel disease, and most things that affect the human experience. Stephen J.D. O’KeefeStephen J.D. O’KeefeDr O’Keefe's research is in the field of nutritional gastroenterology. Most of his investigations are translational in nature, evaluating the physiological and pathophysiological responses to dietary intake and interventional feeding. He has had NIH funding for his studies on the effects of enteral and parenteral feeding on the synthesis and secretion of trypsin in humans which have formed the basis for his latest NIH funded multicenter study on distal jejunal feeding in acute pancreatitis. He has applied stable isotope labeling techniques to the study of in vivo amino acid turnover and protein synthesis, with particular attention to the measurement of mucosal protein turnover and the synthesis of trypsin in patients with acute severe pancreatitis. His second area of current interest is the management of short bowel by enteral and IV feeding, and by small bowel transplantation. Third, he is investigating the influence of diet on colonic bacterial metabolism and colon cancer risk.