Announcements

MDPI will be attending the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society 21st Annual Meeting (AOGS2024) in Pyeongchang, Republic of Korea, which will take place from 23 to 28 June 2024, at booth A10. AOGS2024 is organized by the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society, and this will be the society’s twenty-first conference. AOGS holds annual conventions providing a unique opportunity for the exchange of scientific knowledge and discussions to address important geo-scientific issues among academia, research institutions, and the public.

The following MDPI journals will be represented at the conference:

• Atmosphere;
• Climate;
• Drones;
• Earth;
• Fuels;
• Geosciences;
• Hydrology;
• Oceans;
• Remote Sensing;
• Sustainability;
• World;
• Water.

If you are planning to attend the conference, please visit our booth #A10. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://www.asiaoceania.org/aogs2024/public.asp?page=home.asp.

We would also like to congratulate the winner of the Climate 2024 Travel Award. The Editorial Director of the MDPI Seoul Office, Dr. Jackie Liu, and MDPI Publisher Ms. Alex Liu will present the prize to Chongyang Zhang from Lanzhou University, China, on the afternoon of 26 June 2024. If you are interested in travel support or learning about other MDPI awards, please visit our booth during the conference where our conference representatives will be available to assist you.

MDPI will be attending the 2024 American Control Conference in Toronto, Canada, which will take place from 8 to 12 July 2024. The American Control Conference (AAC) is the annual conference of the American Automatic Control Council (AACC), the U.S. national member organization of the International Federation for Automatic Control (IFAC). ACC 2024 is committed to being not only the premier venue for the dissemination of work in automatic control and systems theory but also providing an environment that is inclusive of and supportive to all members.

The following MDPI journals will be represented at the conference:

• Applied Sciences;
• Electronics;
• Actuators;
• Applied System Innovation;
• Automation;
• Drones;
• Eng;
• Inventions;
• Machines;
• Modelling;
• Processes;
• Robotics;
• Technologies;
• Telecom.

If you are planning to attend the above conference, please visit our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following website: https://acc2024.a2c2.org/.

We are pleased to announce the winner of the Drones 2023 Young Investigator Award—Dr. Rohan Chandra.

Dr. Rohan Chandra is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Texas Robotics, advised by Dr. Joydeep Biswas and Dr. Peter Stone, at the University of Texas, Austin, USA. His research focuses on algorithms and systems for enabling robots to navigate safely and efficiently among humans, like humans. Dr. Chandra obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. in 2018 and 2022 from the University of Maryland, USA, advised by Dr. Dinesh Manocha, and completed his B.Tech at Delhi Technological University, New Delhi, India in 2016. His doctoral thesis focused on autonomous driving in dense, heterogeneous, and unstructured traffic environments.

As the awardee, Dr. Rohan Chandra will receive an honorarium of CHF 2000, an offer to publish a paper free of charge in Drones (ISSN: 2504-446X) before the end of 2024 following peer review, and an electronic certificate.

We would like to thank all of the nominators from various fields of study for their participation and all of the Award Committee Members for their evaluation of the many excellent nominations.

Prof. Dr. Diego González-Aguilera, Editor-in-Chief
On behalf of the Drones 2023 Young Investigator Evaluation Committee

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Drones 2022 Best Paper Award. All papers published from 1 January to 31 December 2022 in Drones (ISSN: 2504-446X) were considered for the award. After a thorough evaluation by the Award Committee from the Editorial Board, based on the originality and significance of the papers, citations, and downloads, two papers were selected.

Article:
“Processing and Interpretation of UAV Magnetic Data: A Workflow Based on Improved Variational Mode Decomposition and Levenberg–Marquardt Algorithm”
by Yaoxin Zheng, Shiyan Li, Kang Xing and Xiaojuan Zhang
Drones 2022, 6(1), 11; https://doi.org/10.3390/drones6010011
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-446X/6/1/11

Review:
“A Review of Counter-UAS Technologies for Cooperative Defensive Teams of Drones”
by Vittorio Ugo Castrillo, Angelo Manco, Domenico Pascarella and Gabriella Gigante
Drones 2022, 6(3), 65; https://doi.org/10.3390/drones6030065
Available online: https://www.mdpi.com/2504-446X/6/3/65

Prize:

• One review award: CHF 500 and a chance to publish a paper free of charge in Drones in 2024 after peer review (the paper type must be an article/review);
• One research article award: CHF 500 and a chance to publish a paper free of charge in Drones in 2024 after peer review (the paper type must be an article/review);
• Each winner will also receive an electronic certificate.

Please join us in congratulating the winners of the Drones 2022 Best Paper Award. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our authors for their continued support.

The Editorial Office of Drones (ISSN: 2504-446X) extends an invitation to scholars with expertise in drones to apply for membership to our Topical Advisory Panel.

As a member of the Topical Advisory Panel, you will be entrusted with responsibilities, including the following:

• Providing regular reviews of manuscripts;
• Setting up at least one Special Issue in partnership with a senior researcher within two years of your appointment and proposing a detailed strategy plan for the Special Issue. The topic of the proposal should be within the scope of Drones. The scope of the Special Issue should be broad enough to attract a reasonable number of submissions but narrow enough to provide a cohesive collection of articles. The Special Issue should cover a small part of the scope of Drones;
• Providing support for Special Issues/Topics related to your expertise when their Guest Editors are not available. This includes the promotion of Special Issues via social media and giving advice on some scientific matters;
• Promoting Drones at conferences (adding one–two slides to your presentation, distributing flyers, recommending the journal to your colleagues, etc.), via social media, and on other relevant platforms;
• Working with Editorial Board Members or the Editorial Office to promote high-quality/featured papers (for example, writing summaries or highlights for editor-selected papers).

The benefits of being a Topical Advisory Panel Member are as follows:

• A certificate in recognition of your position;
• Additional sponsorships for conferences organized by the Topical Advisory Panel Members of Drones;
• Travel grants for conferences that you attend or organize.

Applicants for this position must fulfill the following criteria:

• Have expertise and experience in a field related to drones;
• Have published at least six papers in the last 5 years as a first author or a corresponding author;
• Have received a Ph.D. degree;
• Currently hold an independent research position in academia or at a government institute.

Please click on the following link to submit your application: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/drones/topical_advisory_panel_application.

For any further inquiries or clarifications, applicants are encouraged to direct their correspondence to the Drones Editorial Office via drones@mdpi.com.

Drones Editorial Office

We are pleased to announce MDPI’s Transfer Service.

This service provides a convenient method of transferring your manuscript file, along with any reviewer comments, to another journal within our publishing portfolio.

We are committed to helping authors find the right home for their research, and we will provide authors with guidance and technical support through all stages of the transfer process. Authors will be able to choose to transfer in the following two situations:

1. Select alternative journals on submission.

2. Authors are encouraged to transfer manuscripts to other MDPI journals.

More details about the Transfer Service can be found at the following link:

https://www.mdpi.com/authors/transfer-service

In acknowledgment of the groundbreaking achievements of Professor Tu Youyou, the Nobel laureate credited with the discovery of artemisinin, MDPI is proud to announce the Tu Youyou Award. This award, inaugurated in 2016, seeks to honor scholars who excel in the fields of natural products chemistry and medicinal chemistry.

Prize:

• CHF 100,000 in total (If there is more than one winner, the prize will be divided equally amongst the winners);
• An award medal for each winner.

Who should be nominated?

• Scientists with outstanding achievements and contributions in the fields of natural products chemistry and medicinal chemistry.

Who can submit a nomination?

• Academic research institutes
• Universities
• Academic societies

Any personal nominations are not accepted.

How do I submit a nomination?
Candidates’ institutional affiliations need to submit their nominations for final candidates to the Tu Youyou Award Team directly by email after internal screening, and each institution can only nominate a maximum of two candidates for each edition of the Tu Youyou Award. Please note that the nominations cannot be modified once they are submitted and confirmed by the Tu Youyou Award Team.

Required nomination materials:
Nomination Form (Download)

Schedule:
Nomination deadline: 31 December 2024;
Winner announcement: 30 April 2025.

Contact:
Tu Youyou Award Team (tuyouyouaward@mdpi.com)

More information can be found on the Tu Youyou Award official website. For any inquiries, do not hesitate to contact the Tu Youyou Award Team.

MDPI Romania sponsored four events over the month of April, contributing author training sessions to each event.

The NutriSciLabs 2024 conference was held at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy on 12 April 2024. Organized by the Association of Students from the Faculty of Pharmacy Studies, the conference aimed to enhance students’ academic writing and research skills, and bolster their confidence in participating in the academic world. Ioana Paunescu, journal relations specialist for MDPI Romania, led the training session. Paunescu first outlined MDPI’s history and core values, then explained academic writing techniques, ethics, and similarity percentages. The presentation covered the entire editorial process, highlighting the amount of attention paid to details throughout manuscript processing. Paunescu also discussed common errors that authors make while writing, and how to avoid such errors.

On 13 April 2024, the NextGEN 2.0 Student Conference took place at the Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. NextGen Healthcare organized this event with the university’s European Students’ Society to discuss European and international current affairs. MDPI Romania contributed an author training session called Steps of the Publication Process. Irina Codruta Zaharia, journal relations specialist, began the session with a general introduction of MDPI before diving into different article types, different layout formats, possible journals to submit to, the MDPI submission checklist, and the MDPI editorial process. By explaining the fundamentals of writing and publishing academic papers, Zaharia imparted valuable industry knowledge to the curious minds present. Participants were eager to engage with Zaharia in the subsequent Q&A session.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the International Conference “Students for Students” has long been a gathering place for undergraduate and postgraduate students of all nationalities to present their work and exchange ideas with each other. This year’s conference was held on 18 April 2024, with MDPI Romania contributing an author training session called The World of Open Access. Key speakers included Dr. Norbert Kiss from MDPI Romania and Prof. Dragos Horvath from Strasbourg University. Dr. Kiss discussed the history of open access, differences between open access publishing and traditional publishing, and implications for open access in the future. Attendees expressed keen interest in the subject, approaching Dr. Kiss with questions about academic publishing as well as his career trajectory.

Most recently, on 26 April 2024, MDPI Romania sponsored the National Symposium of Students from Geology and Geophysics Faculties. The AAPG Students Chapter at the Babes-Bolyai University organized this event as an opportunity for geology students from all Romanian universities to present their work and confer with other researchers. Dr. Kiss gave his lecture The World of Open Access at this event as well.

MDPI is thankful to all the participants, speakers, and organizers who attended these events. Through their enthusiasm and dedication, these events were great successes.

MDPI will be attending the 35th Irish Signals and Systems Conference in Belfast, UK, which will take place from 13 to 14 June 2024. The conference focuses on digital signal processing, control systems, communications and related fields of ICT, and encompasses algorithms and system modeling, design, and implementation for a broad range of applications.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Applied Sciences;
• Electronics;
• Drones;
• Mathematics;
• Network;
• Signals;
• Smart Cities;
• Systems;
• Telecom.

If you are attending the conference, please visit our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person and answering any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following link: https://issc.ie/index.html.

MDPI is attending the Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2024 (JpGU 2024). The event will be held at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan, from 26 to 31 May 2024, and it is organized by the Japan Geoscience Union (JpGU). JpGU is an academic union that encompasses all the Earth and planetary science disciplines and related fields; additionally, it has been organizing annual meetings since 2005. JpGU 2024 will cover a wide range of Earth and planetary sciences, including space and planetary sciences, atmospheric and hydrospheric sciences, human geosciences, solid Earth sciences, and biogeosciences. The JpGU annual meeting provides participants with a good opportunity to become familiar with cutting-edge research and unique approaches to research objects within their own special field and beyond.

Representatives of the following MDPI journals will be attending:

• Remote Sensing;
• Climate;
• Coasts;
• Drones;
• Earth;
• Forecasting;
• Forests;
• GeoHazards;
• Geomatics;
• Geosciences;
• Geotechnics;
• Hydrology;
• Oceans;
• Quaternary;
• Sustainability;
• Water.

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (#Pub01). Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.jpgu.org/meeting_e2024/.