Dear Colleagues,

Finally, after an extensive voting period, we are proud to present the first winner of the Polymers Young Investigator Award to:

Dr. Luis M. Campos

who is an assistant professor at the Chemistry Department of Columbia University, USA. He was selected by the votes of the evaluation committes of Polymers Invesitigator Award from 38 candidates who were proposed by at least two colleagues from the field. Fifteen of the candidates are working in the United States, 13 in Europe and 10 at universities in Asian countries. The proposed candidates were representing a diverse range of fields of polymer science. Dr. Campos received his Ph.D. with Professor Miguel A. Garcia-Garibay and Professor Kendall N. Houk at UCLA in 2016 and did postdoc training in UCSB under the supervision of Craig J. Hawker. At the age of 37, Dr. Campos has already achieved an extra-ordinary standing in the polymer community. His excellent work focuses on the design and application of polymeric materials for e.g., solar cells and organic light emitting diodes, all topics of high societal and economic impact. His research has been featured in highly ranking journals such as the Nature family, Angewandte Chemie, and JACS to name a few. To date, he has co-authored over 60 articles and has received numerous awards. This finally led to invitations to numerous named lectures all over the world. Moreover, his work constitutes not only high level basic research but has shown to be highly relevant for industry which is reflected in 10 patents filed by him and his coworkers.

In addition to the cash prize and award, Dr. Campos will be an invited speaker at the 2018 Polymers conference.

On behalf of the Polymers Editorial office staff and editorial board members, I wish to congratulate Dr. Campos on his excellent performance and wish him all the best for his future career.

Prof. Dr. Alexander Böker,
Editor-in-Chief