Announcements

Electronics, an MDPI open access journal on the science of electronics and its applications, has published more than 3000 papers since its inception in 2012. Electronics is now covered in the Science Citation Index Expanded in Web of Science and received an impact factor of 1.764 for 2018, which corresponds to a ranking of 154/265 (Q3) in the JCR category “Engineering, Electrical and Electronic”.

The current Scopus CiteScore of Electronics is 2.49, ranking Q1 in the category of “Hardware and Architecture” and Q2 in the category of “Electrical and Electronics Engineering”, “Control and Systems Engineering”, “Signal Processing”, and “Computer Networks and Communications” based on the data from SCImago.

Electronics 2020 Young Investigator Award

Prof. Shahar Kvatinsky is an Associate Professor at the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Technion–Israel Institute of Technology. Shahar received a B.S. in computer engineering and applied physics and an MBA degree in 2009 and 2010, respectively, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology in 2014. From 2006 to 2009, he worked as a circuit designer at Intel. From 2014 and 2015, he was a post-doctoral research fellow at Stanford University. Kvatinsky is an editor of Microelectronics Journal and has been the recipient of numerous awards: the 2019 Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research, 2015 IEEE Guillemin-Cauer Best Paper Award, 2015 Best Paper of Computer Architecture Letters, Viterbi Fellowship, Jacobs Fellowship, ERC starting grant, the 2017 Pazy Memorial Award, the 2014 and 2017 Hershel Rich Technion Innovation Awards, 2013 Sanford Kaplan Prize for Creative Management in High Tech, 2010 Benin prize, and seven Technion excellence teaching awards. His current research is focused on circuits and architectures with emerging memory technologies and design of energy efficient architectures.

It was a difficult decision given the number of high quality applications for the award, and we would like to thank all the applicants from various fields of study for their participation, and all the Award Committee members for their efforts in evaluating the many applications. We congratulate the winner, Prof. Shahar Kvatinsky, on his accomplishments. We wish him further success in his career.

For more information about Electronics awards, please check: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/electronics/awards

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2020 Travel Award sponsored by MDPI and Electronics. The award was granted to two outstanding young researchers working in thematic areas:

Electronics 2020 Travel Award

Dr. David Valiente is a postdoctoral fellow in the communications engineering department of Miguel Hernández University (UMH), within the area of electronics. He received degrees in telecommunications (Eng.), industrial and telecommunications (M.S.Eng.), teacher training (M.S.), and a Ph.D. in robotics, all of them with honours. He conducted research at Imperial College, Polytechnic University of Madrid, and Polytechnic Institute of Engineering of Coimbra. His research work has laid the groundwork for the innovative creation of a realistic, robust, and feasible mapping and localization mobile robotic system, which can be exploited through a wide range of real applications in autonomous robots. Additionally, he is currently setting the foundations of a new and promising research line on advanced organic photovoltaic materials, focusing on obtaining high power conversion efficiency in solar cells.

Electronics 2020 Travel Award

Dr. Jaroslav Frnda graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the VSB-Technical University of Ostrava (Czech Republic) in 2013. He received his Ph.D. in 2018 with the thesis topic “New Method for Video Quality Evaluation” at the same university. Since 2019, he has been working at the University of Zilina (Slovakia). His research includes multimedia services, QoS/QoE (video quality assessement methods), computer networks and next generation networks, and artificial intelligence.

This was certainly a difficult decision given the collection of high quality applications submitted for the awards. We would like to thank all the applicants for submitting such a range of diverse and fascinating research topics and congratulate the winners for their accomplishment.

For more information about Electronics awards, please check: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/electronics/awards

As a leading Open Access publisher, MDPI is committed to fostering open scientific exchange in all forms across all disciplines. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, many researchers have to stay at home and many academic conferences have been cancelled or postponed. In light of these changes, MDPI has adopted numerous initiatives that may help accelerate scientific exchange and provide support to the academics during this period.

Scholarly Community—Encyclopedia

Encyclopedia is an online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as providing benchmark information for researchers and the general public interested in accurate and advanced knowledge on specific topics.

Comprehensive and Free Literature Database—Scilit

Scilit is a comprehensive, free database for scientists that uses a new method to collate data and index scientific material. Our crawlers extract the latest data from CrossRef and PubMed on a daily basis. This means that newly published articles are immediately added to Scilit.

Display Academic Achievements—SciProfiles

SciProfiles is an innovative social network for researchers and scholars that is developed by MDPI. In line with our broad mission, the purpose of SciProfiles is to accelerate discovery and innovation by facilitating immediate access to research results and providing opportunities for academic networking.

Organize and Participate in Conferences Online—Sciforum

Sciforum is an event planning platform that supports open science by offering the opportunity to host and participate in academic conferences. It provides an environment for scholarly exchange, discussion of topics of current interest, building of networks, and establishing collaborations.

Post Early Versions of Research Outputs—Preprints

Preprints is a platform dedicated to making early versions of research outputs permanently available and citable. We post original research articles and comprehensive reviews, and papers can be updated by authors at any time. Content on Preprints is not peer-reviewed, and feedback can be received from readers.

***

MDPI remains committed to open science and open data and has signed a statement, along with more than thirty scholarly publishers, showing our intention to facilitate sharing of new research findings as early on as possible. The initiative sees publishers collectively removing barriers to new research, in the face of a global healthcare crisis.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Piero Cosseddu has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief for the section “Organic Electronics” of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). His term started in April 2020.

Piero Cosseddu is Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering of the University of Cagliari, Italy, where he currently teaches “Analog Electronics” and “Wearable and Flexible Electronics”. He also graduated in Electronic Engineering in 2003 from the University of Cagliari, where he obtained his Ph.D. in Electronic and Computer Science Engineering in 2007 before continuing as Postdoctoral Fellow at the DIEE from May 2007 to March 2010.

In 2008, he founded the company TechOnYou SRL, focused on the development of innovative systems for medical monitoring and healthcare, robotics, and biotechnologies, where he has been employed from 2012 to 2014 as Project Manager.

His research activity has mainly been focused on the field of Organic Electronics with particular attention towards the design, fabrication, and characterization of organic semiconductor-based devices on flexible plastic substrates as organic field effect transistors (OFETs), organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs), and nonvolatile memory elements. He has been particularly involved in the development of innovative sensing systems for different applications, including as biochemical sensors, wearable electronics, and artificial skin.

Piero Cosseddu is author of more than 100 papers and book chapters of peer-reviewed international journals and conference proceedings.

He has given more than 20 invited talks at various international conferences, schools, and other institutions.

The world is currently suffering from a global pandemic of the corona virus COVID-19. MDPI expresses its sympathies for all of those affected by the virus and stands in solidarity with medical staff and researchers treating patients and searching for scientific solutions.

MDPI has previously published papers covering corona viruses in addition to new papers on the current outbreak, see all papers here. In particular, Viruses has published a number of Special Issues and papers on the topic (see here, here, and here) as well as a forthcoming Special Issue.

Alongside journal articles, MDPI has been a strong supporter of preprints, which are increasingly being used to rapidly disseminate the latest research, and we run the preprint server Preprints.org. Our database of research articles, Scilit, is free to use and covers all publishers including preprint servers. New papers are often in search results within hours of publication and users can set up alerts for new papers.

Our main priority during this period has been the health and safety of staff, and we continue to allow staff to work at home and closely monitor the situation in all locations in which we work. Despite the restrictions, we continue to provide a full publication service and, by close collaboration with our editorial boards and making use our in-house teams, ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in publishing vital research. Fast and open publication has always been at the core of MDPI values and is now more important than ever.

We hope that a solution to the current situation will emerge soon. In the meantime, we will do our best to continue communicating vital research in all fields.

The advantages of the open access model of scientific publishing are being increasingly recognized in the scientific community. It allows new scientific evidence to be accessed from the moment of publication for free by anyone around the globe, boosting the impact of new research. In response, many funders, libraries and universities have been adopting new principles to accelerate the transition to open access.

Recently, “transformative agreements” have been negotiated between traditional publishers and various institutions. While increasing the number of open access papers, these agreements lack binding commitments to a full transition to open access, their conditions vary across different regions, and access is still limited for many users.

MDPI is a co-signatory of the recent position statement raising concerns about potential downsides of transformative agreements and how they may delay a full transition to open access. The statement highlights that these models “risk perpetuating current limitations on access, transparency and market competitiveness, while simultaneously facilitating excessive charges on the public purse”.

As a pioneering open access journal publisher, MDPI is the first to promote the importance of science being made available to everyone. Our peer-reviewed journals, covering diverse academic disciplines, are fully accessible to the public free of charge under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). This is why, along with other open access publishers, MDPI is a proud signatory of the position paper and is committed to contributing to the replacement of weak transitional agreements with “agreements with publishers that are already fully committed to open science and who offer full, immediate and transparent Open Access”.

Read the position paper here

We are pleased to announce that Encyclopedia will be awarding five Outstanding Contributor Awards for researchers in 2020. The nominations and applications will be assessed by an Evaluation Committee consisting of senior scholars from the Encyclopedia Editorial Board.

Prize for Winners

1. An official certificate;
2. A cash award of 500 CHF or an MDPI discount voucher of 800 CHF.

Application Deadline

31 December, 2020 (Please send your application email with a list of all entries you contributed to our office before the deadline: office@encyclopedia.pub)

Candidate Requirements

1. Have a Ph.D. degree;
2. Have more than three qualified entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020.

Evaluation Standards

1. Number of entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020;
2. Quality of entries online (including length, figure quality, and novelty);
3. Impact of entries (including the number of likes, discussion contents, views, and downloads).

If you are a researcher and have not yet contribute entries to Encyclopedia, please do not miss this chance to highlight your research results.

MDPI will be attending the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), Seville, Spain, October 12–14, 2020.

The IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) is the flagship conference of the IEEE Circuits and Systems (CAS) Society and the world’s premiere networking forum for researchers in the highly active fields of theory, design and implementation of circuits and systems. This is accomplished through technical conference sessions, poster sessions, live demonstration sessions, and publication of conference papers. ISCAS 2020 will be driven by the theme Deploying CASS Knowledge towards Society Grand Challenges aiming to emphasize the potential of the CAS Society to find multidisciplinary solutions for the societal and engineering challenges of our times.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Electronics (leading journal)
• Games
• Jounal of Sensor and Acuator Networks
• Jounal of Low Power Electronics and Applications

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth. 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://iscas2020.org/.

MDPI will be attending the CLEO Laser Science to Photonic Applictions, San Jose, California, USA, May 12-14, 2020

Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics to generate quality face-time with world renowned industry leaders and help achieve your annual sales and marketing goals. Special industry offerings make this event a magnet for executives and scientific equipment users throughout the buying channel. Exhibitors will have extensive, targeted opportunities for exposure and in-depth interaction with key prospects and customers. These high-level buyers are looking to you—the leading product experts, manufacturers and service providers—for the most innovative, cost-effective solutions to support their missions.

The following MDPI journals will be represented:

• Applied Sciences (leading journal)
• Photonics (co-leading)
• Electronics
• Fibers
• Materials

If you are also attending this conference, please feel free to stop by our booth (Booth #2607). 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.cleoconference.org/home/.