Announcements

Conference: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2023)

Date: 29 May–2 June 2023
Place: London, UK

Machines (ISSN: 2075-1702) will be attending ICRA 2023 as an exhibitor. This meeting will take place from 29 May to 2 June 2023 in London, UK.

The largest and most prestigious event of the year in the robotics and automation calendar, the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) will bring together the world's top academics, researchers, and industry representatives. With the conference taking place in the UK for the first time, London will provide the perfect backdrop to this world-class event.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Machines;
• Sensors;
• Actuators;
• Applied Sciences;
• Electronics;
• Robotics;
• Systems;
• JSAN;
• Technologies;
• Inventions;
• Designs;
• Drones;
• JMMP;
• Telecom;
• AI;
• Automation.

If you are planning to attend this conference, please do not hesitate to start an online conversation with us. 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.icra2023.org/.

MDPI will be attending the XII Reunión del grupo de física de la materia condensada de la RSEF (GEFES 2023) in Salamanca, Spain, which will take place from 1 to 3 February 2023. The GEFES 2023 is the annual meeting of GEFES, the Condensed Matter Physics Division of the Spanish Royal Physics Society. The theme of GEFES 2023 is to review the condensed matter physics research achievements of the society in the past year and discuss the opportunities and challenges in the field.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Electronics;
• Nanomaterials;
• Energies;
• Materials;
• Symmetry;
• Electronic Materials;
• Physics;
• Condensed Matter.

If you are attending this 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://gefes2023.es/.

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative—the MDPI Special Issue Mentor Program.

This program will enable early career researchers (who must hold a Ph.D. in a related field) to experience editing a Special Issue in MDPI journals, under the mentorship of our experienced Editorial Board Members or other experienced scientists. The mentor program will provide an excellent opportunity for early career scientists to gain editorial experience, and to cultivate their ability to edit scientific research.

The mentee’s responsibilities include:

• Proposing a Special Issue title and assisting the mentor in preparing a summary (around 200–400 words) and 3–10 keywords describing the background, importance, and goal of the Issue;
• Writing a brief promotion plan for the Special Issue;
• Preparing a list of scholars who may be interested in the Issue and personally e-mailing invitations on behalf of Guest Editors;
• Writing an editorial for the online Special Issue together with the mentor.

The mentor’s responsibilities include:

• Conducting a final check before the Special Issue is published online;
• Performing editorial control of the Special Issue and quality control of the publications, both of which must be carried out in a timely manner;
• Providing suggestions to younger scholars if they have any doubts or concerns regarding submissions;
• Organizing video calls with young scholars and the Editorial Office regularly to discuss problems and improvement suggestions for the Special Issue;
• Making and submitting decisions regarding submissions with the assistance of mentees.

Certificates and awards:
After the Special Issue closes, the Editorial Office will provide official certificates for all the mentors and early career researchers.

If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your Special Issue proposal to the Editorial Office of a journal you choose, and we will discuss the process (i.e., mentor collaboration, Special Issue topic feasibility analysis, etc.) in further detail. The full list of MDPI journals is as follows: https://www.mdpi.com/about/journals.

In addition to the new Special Issue Mentor Program, we will continue to welcome all Special Issue proposals focusing on hot research topics.

MDPI has just become the first open access (OA) publisher to reach the milestone of one million articles published. That is one million articles freely available to all, to circulate and build upon! We are proud to share this special moment with the global scientific community.

This landmark has been reached thanks to the immeasurable support of more than 600,000 expert reviewers, 66,000 editorial board members and 6700 hard-working colleagues across MDPI’s global offices.

Within more than 25 years of publishing, our journals received 2.1 million manuscripts and generated 4.6 million peer review reports to get to one million papers published.

Reaching the milestone of one million articles published reinforces our mission to remove any existing barriers and to make scientific research accessible to all. Since its inception, MDPI’s goal has been to create reliable processes to make science open. This is a path towards facilitating the dissemination of novel insights in scientific communities.

Regular feedback from authors and reviewers shows that our service is greatly appreciated and needed. At the same time, the feedback helps us identify areas for further improvement.

As it stands, a significant share of published research findings remain closed access. More than half of the content published with the most well-known legacy publishers stays behind a paywall, and that is not including articles published in hybrid OA journals, or made available months or years after publication.

A new policy announced by the US administration in August 2022 requires that, as of January 2026, all US federally funded research be made freely and immediately available after publication. While the new policy does not mandate articles be published under an open access license, it is aligned with the open access movement in removing all barriers to research. Similarly, some of the most advanced research institutions in the world intend to have all funded research articles published in open access by 2025.

MDPI is proud to be the leading agent of the transition to open access.

"Thanks a Million" to all the contributors!

We are pleased to announce that the website of the MDPI Sustainability Foundation has been revamped! For the past couple of months, our UX UI team and front-end developers have been working hard to launch the website in time for the opening of the Sustainability Awards nominations.

The website is not the only thing that has had a remodeling. Indeed, the format of the Emerging Sustainability Leader Award (ESLA) has been updated. ESLA is now a competition open to individual researchers or start-ups founded by researchers under the age of 35. Nominee applications will go through 2 rounds of selection until the final 3 are decided. The finalists will then be invited to give pitch presentations during the Award Ceremony to win either first place (10,000 USD) or runner-up (2 x 5000 USD).

The World Sustainability Award, on the other hand, remains the same: a total prize money of 100,000 USD is up for grabs by senior individual researchers or groups of researchers from the international research community.

Nominations for both the World Sustainability Award and the Emerging Sustainability Leader award are now open! Check out our new website for more information on how to nominate.

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the Electronics 2022 Young Investigator Award is Dr. Houqiang Fu.

Dr. Houqiang Fu is an assistant professor at the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at Arizona State University, Temple, USA. Dr. Fu’s research interests are exploring novel materials and developing next-generation electronic and photonic/optoelectronic devices as well as systems to address critical societal needs in regard to energy efficiency, computing, communication, and sensing, which are at the interdisciplinary intersection of electrical engineering, materials science, photonics, and physics. Dr. Fu received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Arizona State University (ASU) in 2019, and he has an outstanding publication record; his work has been chronicled in over 160 journal and conference publications, 4 book chapters, 2 granted patents, and 10 pending patents. His research has been featured by many media outlets, including IEEE Spectrum, Semiconductor Today, Compound Semiconductor, and Silicon Valley Microelectronics, and has been collectively cited more than 16,000 times (Hirsch index of 25). He is a rising star in the field of third-generation wide-bandgap semiconductor materials and devices, in addition to their optoelectronic applications. Despite his young age, Dr. Fu has been the recipient of several academic prizes, including the 2021 ISU Regents Innovation Fund Award, the 2019 Palais Outstanding Doctoral Award (the highest honor for ASU ECEE Ph.D. graduates), and the 2018 ASU Outstanding Research Award. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Fu for his outstanding achievements.

As the awardee, Dr. Fu will receive an honorarium of CHF 2000, a certificate, and an offer to publish one paper free of charge in Electronics (ISSN: 2079-9292) after peer review before the end of June 2023.

On behalf of the Assessment Committee Members—Dr. Xiongfeng Ma, Prof. Dr. Boris Andrievsky, Prof. Dr. Elias Stathatos, Dr. Nikolay Hinov, and Prof. Dr. Kiat Seng Yeo—we congratulate the winner on his accomplishments. We would also like to thank all of the nominators from various fields of study for their participation as well as all of the Award Committee Members for their evaluation of the abundant excellent nominations.

Prof. Dr. Flavio Canavero
Editor-in-Chief of Electronics

As the Editor-in-Chief of Electronics (ISSN: 2079-9292), I am pleased to announce the winners of the Electronics Travel Awards for 2022. The awards have been granted to Mr. Gia Quoc Bao Tran and Dr. Nishu Gupta.

Name: Gia Quoc Bao Tran
Affilaition: Ph.D. student at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, Université PSL, France
Research interests: observer design for hybrid dynamical systems

Name: Nishu Gupta
Affilaition: Postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Research interests: autonomous vehicles; edge computing; smart wireless systems; Internet of things; deep learning; ad hoc networks

Each winner will receive CHF 800 and a certificate.

With so many high-quality applicants, the evaluation process and final decision were challenging. We would like to thank all of the applicants for submitting their diverse and fascinating range of research topics.

On behalf of the Assessment Committee—Dr. Maysam Abbod, Dr. Francisco Falcone, Dr. Ping-Feng Pai and Prof. Dr. Giulio Antonini—we congratulate the winners on their accomplishments.

Prof. Dr. Flavio Canavero
Editor-in-Chief, Electronics

MDPI will be attending the 2022 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference and Expo, Asia-Pacific (ITEC-AP 2022) in Haining, China, which will take place from 28 to 31 October 2022. The ITEC-AP 2022 is organized by Zhejiang University, and aims to provide a forum for sharing knowledge, experience, and ideas in electrical technologies for transportation. Technical sessions, tutorials, exhibitors, and industry activities are planned.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Electronics;
• Machines;
• Actuators;
• Future Transportation;
• Electricity;
• Smart Cities;
• Sustainability;
• Vehicles.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions that you may have. For more information about the conference, please visit the following link: https://www.itec-ap2022.com/.

Peer Review Week began 19 September 2022 under the theme of “Research Integrity: Creating and Supporting Trust in Research”. Through various blog articles, podcast, and webinar, we discussed this crucial subject throughout the week, celebrating the essential role peer review plays in maintaining research quality.

To begin, we held a Webinar on the topic. Professor Peter W. Choate and Dr. Emmanuel Obeng-Gyasi joined Dr. Ioana Craciun, one of MDPI’s scientific officers, for an in-depth discussion.

We invite you to view the event recording:

During the week, the MDPI Blog in a series articles highlighted how good Peer Review safeguards research integrity. The following topics were covered:

• Peer Review Week 2022
• Research Integrity
• What We’ve Learned About Peer Review Reports
• 4 Steps to the Perfect Peer Review Report
• How to Write the Perfect Peer Review Report: An Interview
• Inviting Great Peer Reviewers

In a new edition of Insight Faster, an MDPI podcast, we were delighted to talk to the co-chairs of the Peer Review Week committee, Jayashree Rajagopalan (Senior Manager of Global Community Engagement for CACTUS) and Danielle Padula (Head of Marketing and Community Development at Scholastica) to get their take on this year’s event and its related topics.

You can find the Podcast here.

We hope you enjoy the contents!

MDPI will be attending the 6th Micro-Nano Optical Technology and Application Conference (MOTA2022) in Nanjing, China, which will take place from 21 to 23 October 2022. The MOTA2022 is organized by the Chinese Society for Optical Engineering, aiming to build a communication platform between researchers and industrial application teams, as well as promote scientific research progress and the industrialization development of micro-nano optics.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Electronics (leading journal);
• Photonics (leading journal);
• Coatings;
• Sensors;
• Crystals;
• Journal of Imaging.

If you are attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth. Our delegates look forward to meeting you in person to answer any questions that you may have.

For more information about the conference, please visit the following link: https://b2b.csoe.org.cn/meeting/MOTA2022.html.