Dear readers,

For well over a year, the Covid-19 pandemic substantially changed the way we live and work as chemists and chemistry educators. The lockdowns enveloped our universities in a silence making hard the transfer of knowledge, experience, and hands-on skills essential to the education of the chemical talents. Online teaching might have some image polishing effect though in fact proved to be just a poor substitution of the laboratory experience and one-on-one contact with the experienced chemists.

We are glad that even under such difficult circumstances we can offer in this special issue of Monatshefte für Chemie—Chemical Monthly a selection of the best papers written by young analytical chemists at the very beginning of their scientific career. The fact that young chemists have not been discouraged by the obstacles from doing their scientific work is a guarantee that chemistry and chemists will also be able to achieve great success in solving the problems that time faces in the future. After all, just as it has always been in the past.

As we are all aware, the reproduction and development of such crucial science as it is analytical chemistry chiefly depends on the young scientists, who—in collaboration with their more experienced colleagues—could bring new, unsuspected views and ideas. With the generous consent of the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Prof. Dr. Peter Gärtner, it is our pleasure to present here twelve papers written by PhD students of analytical chemistry from five countries. In this way, we would like to support their research activities in the field of analytical chemistry, enhance their skills in scientific writing, and promote their careers as researchers.

The topics of papers in this issue cover several aspects of current analytical chemistry ranging from theoretical problems, through the improvement of analytical techniques, to the development of new analytical methods for application on pharmaceutical or historical issues. Let us hope that all readers will find the presented contributions interesting, thought-provoking, and of high quality. And thanks to that, they can recognize that the new generation of analytical chemists secures the future of analytical chemistry as rewarding, exciting, steadily developing science with vivid perspectives and applicability for the good of all humanity.

As Editors of this special issue, we owe our deep gratitude to the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Dr. Peter Gärtner, and the Managing Editor, Dr. Christian Hametner, for their kind support in preparing this issue. We thank all referees for valuable comments that improved the quality of the papers, and to the staff of the Publisher, Springer Vienna, for all their help with the release of this special issue.

Enjoy reading this issue,

Karel Nesměrák and Tomáš Navrátil.