ACS To Launch New Journal

In early 2009, the American Chemical Society will introduce its 36th journal, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. Kirk S. Schanze, a chemistry professor at the University of Florida (UF), will serve as editor of the new publication.

The peer-reviewed journal will be the first ACS materials chemistry publication to "focus exclusively on applied science and engineering, as opposed to fundamental science and engineering," Schanze says. Its articles, letters, editorial commentaries, and topical forums will cover a range of subjects, including advanced active and passive electronic and optical materials; coatings; colloids; biomaterials and biointerfaces; polymer materials; hybrid and composite materials; and friction and wear.

"Although there are other journals in the area of applied materials, most are focused on a specific subdiscipline such as applied polymer science or applied surface science," Schanze notes. In contrast, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces "will be the first applied materials journal that is comprehensive in scope, and as such it will attract a broad readership," he says. "This will allow authors to have their work reach a wide audience, giving their work greater impact."

"With nearly 10 years' tenure as a senior editor for the ACS journal Langmuir, collaborations with government and industrial laboratories, and broad research interests that dovetail extremely well with the scope of the journal, Professor Schanze was the natural candidate for editor-in-chief of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces," says Susan L. King, senior vice president for ACS's Journals Publishing Group.

Schanze earned a B.S. in chemistry from Florida State University in 1979 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1983. After a stint as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the UF faculty in 1986. He studies the interaction of light with organic and organometallic materials for applications such as light-emitting diodes and fluorescent sensors.