Announcements

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Kenji Uchino has been appointed as Associate Editor-in-Chief of the journal Actuators .

Prof. Dr. Kenji Uchino, one of the pioneers in piezoelectric actuators, is Founding Director of the International Center for Actuators and Transducers, Materials Research Institute and Professor of EE and MatSE, Distinguished Honors Faculty of Schreyer Honors College at The Penn State University. His research interest is in solid-state physics, especially in ferroelectrics and piezoelectrics, including basic research on theory, materials, device design and fabrication processes, as well as application development of solid state actuators/sensors for precision positioners, micro-robotics, ultrasonic motors, smart structures, piezoelectric transformers and energy harvesting. K. Uchino is known as the discoverer/inventor of the following well-known topics: (1) lead magnesium niobate (PMN)-based electrostricive materials, (2) cofired multilayer piezoelectric actuators (MLAs), (3) superior piezoelectricity in relaxor-lead titanate-based piezoelectric single crystals (PZN-PT), (4) the photostrictive phenomenon, (5) shape memory ceramics, (6) magnetoelectric composite sensors, (7) transient response control scheme of piezoelectric actuators (pulse-drive technique), (8) micro ultrasonic motors, (9) multilayer disk piezoelectric transformers, and (10) piezoelectric loss characterization methodology. Ongoing research projects are also in the above areas, especially in the last three items (8), (9), and (10). He has authored 582 papers, 77 books, and 33 patents in the area of ceramic actuators; 53 papers/books among his publications have been cited more than 100 times, leading to his average h-index of 73. His total citation number of 28,600 and annual average citation number of 560 are very high in the College of Engineering.

We are confident that the strong academic background and connections of the Editor will help continue to raise the prestige and quality of Actuators, while maintaining the efficiency of manuscript processing that Actuators authors have come to expect.

For more information about Actuators, please visit: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/actuators.