We are pleased to announce that Dr. Calogero Vetro has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Mathematics” in Symmetry (ISSN: 2073-8994).

Dr. Calogero Vetro is an Associate Professor of mathematical analysis at the Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy, where he has been since 2005. He is also affiliated with the department of mathematics and computer science at the same University. He received a Laurea Degree in mechanical engineering in 2000 and a Ph.D. in engineering of automation and control systems in 2004. Dr. Vetro has various editorial roles on the boards of several scientific journals and has been the guest editor of Special Issues about fixed point theory, functional analysis, and partial differential equations. He also acts as a referee for many scientific journals in the fields of pure and applied mathematics. Dr. Vetro is on the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers List for the years 2015, 2016, and 2017. His research interests are in ordinary and partial differential equations, functional analysis, operator theory, fixed point theory, best approximation, mathematical programming, real functions, and, more recently, image restoration and deep learning. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 published papers.

The following is a Q&A with Dr. Calogero Vetro, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views of the research area and open access publishing:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take on the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief?
I am fully involved in different editorial roles for a variety of scientific journals in the field of mathematics and its applications. Each new role represents an exciting new challenge to share my expertise with others, but also to improve my skills and to benefit from working in an international team.

2. What is your vision for the journal?
Symmetry is a high-impact journal with an interdisciplinary vocation, which makes it attractive to a large audience of researchers in both theoretical and applied sciences. The journal is well supported by an effective editorial team which guarantees quality and efficiency of the review process, as well as fast publication and diffusion of positively evaluated works. Hence, Symmetry represents a wide platform to share new ideas that may originate new directions of research on a variety of topics, with impact on real-life processes. Based on this, additional efforts must be made to maintain the journal's high standards and to consolidate the leadership among all interdisciplinary scientific journals.

3. What developments in your field of expertise excite you at this time?
Mathematics is universally recognized as the foundation of many technologies and applications in real-life dynamics. Hence, any new mathematical advancement increases the possibilities to better understand and represent each aspect of natural and artificial processes involved in everyday real life.

4. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?
The development of open access is closely related to the advancement of communication technologies for the world wide web. Easy and immediate access to any new scientific discovery significantly increases the level of knowledge. Currently, many countries request their scientists to publish their works in this form, therefore there are national policies to fund and grant research in open access. This issue is crucial to guarantee all researchers better conditions to learn more on each topic of their interest, as well as to disseminate their works quickly.

We warmly welcome Dr. Calogero Vetro as the Editor-in-Chief for this Section, and we look forward to him leading Symmetry to achieve many more milestones.