Prof. Dr. Zhiwei Gao Appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of Section “Automation Control Systems” in Processes

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Prof. Dr. Zhiwei Gao as the new Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Automation Control Systems” in Processes (ISSN: 2227-9717).

Prof. Dr. Zhiwei Gao is a Reader at the School of Engineering, Physics and Mathematics at Northumbria University, UK. His research interests include model-based control, data-driven modelling, estimation and filtering, fault diagnosis and health management, resilient control, intelligent optimisation, power electronics, wind energy systems, wave energy systems, and electric vehicles.

Prof. Dr. Zhiwei Gao has authored over 260 papers published in scientific journals and conference proceedings. He has editorial experience as an academic editor for over 10 refereed journals such as IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, ISA Transactions (Elsevier), Renewable Energy (Elsevier), Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing (Springer), and so forth. Prof. Dr. Gao was appointed as IEEE Fellow in 2023. He is also a Fellow of AAIA and Fellow of AIIA. He is the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship and the RAEng/Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Zhiwei Gao, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views on the current state of the field:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take on the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief?
The journal Processes is an internationally excellent journal in chemical engineering, industrial processes, energy, automation, control systems, and so forth, which has published many influential books, special issues and papers, stimulating the research and applications in the field. It is a challenging and demanding task to take the Section Editor-in-Chief role in a research field with dynamic changes and considerable competition. Following the mission of the journal, my main aim is to promote the journal to become an internationally leading journal especially in the field of automation and control systems and their applications in industries.

2. What is your vision for the Section?
My vision is to further enhance the influence of the journal in the field, especially in process control, automation, and control systems and their applications, by attracting contributions from the leading researchers in the area. The automation control system section will become more important in the era of the information age and energy revolution.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?
With the development of artificial intelligence, automation and control systems are ushering in many breakthroughs which have brought opportunities to our journal to publish timely high-quality papers owing to the rapid publication property. The updated data of our journal will provide sources to further promote the research and application in the field.

4. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?
The journal Processes supports open access science, which allows authors to hold the copyright of their research. Moreover, open access schemes enable a rapid publication which is particularly important for the authors to share the research outcomes with the scientific community promptly.

We wish Prof. Dr. Zhiwei Gao every success in his new position, and we look forward to his contributions to the journal.