First 'Biomaterials Science' Editors-in-Chief Meeting Held at Northwestern
March 21, 2012
On March 16 iCeMS Director Norio Nakatsuji and Northwestern University Professor 
Phillip Messersmith met at the university's Evanston campus to have the first editor-in-chief meeting of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)'s Biomaterials Science, which was launched in collaboration with the iCeMS in January 2012. This meeting was hosted by Dr. Messersmith and chaired by the journal's managing editor Liz Davies from the RSC.
At the meeting the direction of the journal was discussed, along with developments in the scope and editorial board. These two editors-in-chief as well as three associate editors — the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Associate Professor Jianjun Cheng, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Professor Matthias Lutolf, and iCeMS Principal Investigator Hiroshi Sugiyama — now compose the editorial board, with about half a dozen more to be added in coming months.
"We, the RSC Publishing, have definitely noticed these [covered in the scope] are increasingly popular areas of research. We wanted to offer authors the choice of journal which is slightly different from existing ones at the moment. So this journal is going to focus on fundamental aspects of biomaterials science and mesoscopic science of materials," said Dr. Davies, commenting on the need for a journal of this nature.
"I agree that there are emerging areas in the biomaterials field which are not captured by journals currently published. So there is an opportunity to bring together an audience that doesn't really fit into any other journals," added Dr. Messersmith, while also stressing that "Biomaterials Science's target audience is more on the basic side of the biomaterials landscape compared to the applied side."
The day also featured Dr. Nakatsuji's talk, entitled "Cell-material integration research at iCeMS for pluripotent stem cell science and technology," as a Northwestern Biomedical Engineering (BME) Department seminar. The room was packed with an engaged audience from within and outside the department, including Professor Horacio Espinosa, Director of the Mechanical Engineering Department's Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Program.
The journal's first editorial board meeting will convene in June 2012 in Chengdu, China. The fifth RSC Editors' Symposium, inviting all RSC Publishing editorial board members, will take place in March 2013 in Brussels, Belgium. Later that month a kick-off symposium for Biomaterials Science will follow in Kyoto, organized as a core component of an iCeMS international symposium.
It was when the city of Evanston, IL was blessed with May-like warmth and a morning breeze from Lake Michigan that these two editors-in-chief met in person for the first time, with many more opportunities already marked on the calendar.
by Yutaka Iijima
Photos
From left: Drs. Messersmith, Davies, and Nakatsuji engaging in an editorial discussion
Dr. Nakatsuji delivering a talk in BME seminar series
A courtyard view from Silverman Hall, which houses the Messersmith lab at the university's Chemistry of Life Processes Institute (CLP)
CLP facility tour: Dr. Messersmith demonstrating a 3D stereographic display wall of the institute's Center for Advanced Molecular Imaging (CAMI)
CLP facility tour: Dr. Neil Kelleher, Director of the institute's Proteomics Center of Excellence (PCE), showcasing its state-of-the-art equipment
The university's Evanston Campus
The Lake Michigan shore on the campus, with downtown Chicago in sight