New Leadership

Times are changing: After 14 years of working for the Macromolecular (and the Advanced) journals, the last seven of which I have served as the Editor-in-Chief for the Macromolecular family, I am extremely happy and proud to hand over my official role of Editor-in-Chief to my esteemed colleagues. While I am extremely proud of the success that the Macromolecular family has had under my leadership, these successes would not have been possible without the capable hands of my colleagues over the last several years. It comes as no surprise that Dr. Stefan Spiegel is now officially the Editor-in-Chief of Macromolecular Theory and Simulations and Macromolecular Reaction Engineering, the latter of which Stefan launched when I just joined the editorial team. Dr. Mara Staffilani has been integral to the continued advancement and direction of Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics for the last several years and she will continue her mission now with the official title of Editor-in-Chief. For Macromolecular Bioscience, there could be no better person to lead this journal than Dr. Anne Pfisterer, who obtained her Ph.D. from the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz under the supervision of Tanja Weil and Klaus Müllen. Anne has already been one of the deputy editors of the Macromolecular journals (just like Mara and David) and a deputy editor of Advanced Science since 2018. Dr. David Huesmann, who joined the team in 2015, will continue on his successful journey to lead the ever-growing journal Macromolecular Materials and Engineering.

That leaves Macromolecular Rapid Communications—the journal that I have always felt closest to, and that I had already enjoyed reading when I started my Ph.D. at the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry in Freiburg in 2001. Although it is very hard for me to give up my position, I am extremely happy to pass it on to my colleague Dr. Bo Weng (located in our Beijing office). Before joining Wiley in 2016, Bo worked at the Southwest University, Chongqing, China, as an associate professor, and already has contributed tremendously to the development of the Macromolecular journals.

While it is extremely exciting to announce new Editor-in-Chiefs for each of the Macromolecular journals, it is important to note that we will be not working alone, nor solely on a single journal. The success of the journal family has and will always rely on our team spirit. And there is more to the team than just the Editors-in-Chief! We also enjoy the support of our peer-review colleagues Dr. Joseph Krumpfer and more recently Dr. Brenton Hammer, both located in our Weinheim office, as well as Dr. Liying (Lynn) Wang in our Beijing office. All post-acceptance aspects in our journals will continue to be dealt with by our experienced colleagues Bernadette Gmeiner and Dr. Kieran O'Brien, while the administration of the journals will continue to be done by Inge Dittmer. Production responsibilities continue to be in the hands of Katja Kornmacher.

Although I am stepping down from my position as Editor-in-Chief of these journals, this is not to say that I will no longer continue to serve and promote them. I will remain the Publisher of the Macromolecular journals, and I am always open to everyone for ideas and suggestions on how to improve and support this family.

Please join me in congratulating all of my colleagues on their well-deserved promotion!

Kirsten Severing – Publisher of Macromolecular Reaction and Engineering