It is a great pleasure for me to welcome Prof. Dr. Andrei Jitianu as a new coeditor of the Journal of Sol–Gel Science and Technology (JSST). He is presently Professor of Chemistry and Chair of the Department of Chemistry at Lehman College of the City University of New York (CUNY), New York (USA).

After getting a B. Sc. degree in Chemistry in 1995, a M. Sc. degree in Inorganic Chemistry in 1996 and a Ph.D. degree in 2001, all obtained at the School of Chemistry of the University of Bucharest (Romania), he left his country to spend 1 year as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the CNRS, University of Orléans, France (2002–2003), 2 years as Research Associate at the Center for Advanced Materials Processing of Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY (2003–2005), and then 3 years as Research Associate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA (2005–2008).

He then started his very successful career in the Department of Chemistry at Lehman College (CUNY, Bronx, NY, USA), first as Assistant Professor, then as Associate Professor and Deputy Chair of the Department of Chemistry, and finally, as Professor of Chemistry and Chair of the Department of Chemistry since about 2 years, both positions that he still holds at present. Moreover, since 2016 he is the chair of the Inorganic Subdiscipèline at the Graduate School of the CUNY.

Prof. Dr Jitianu has received many awards such as, recently, the “ISSO Faculty & Staff Superhero Award” from the Lehman College. CUNY in 2018. Among his recently funded grants are the 2019–2022 Principal Investigator NSF Award #1911509, “Collaborative Research: Electrospray Deposition of ‘Melting Gels’ for Multifunctional Coatings” and the Principal Investigator PSC-CUNY Award # 62293-00 50, “Hydroxyapatite based 3D self-healing barriers”.

The publishing activities of A. Jitianu are outstanding, and we can cite 80 peer-reviewed journal papers, 13 of which have been published in JSST; 19 conference proceedings papers; three book chapters; and two editorials. He has also edited two books, including the 2018 Handbook of Sol–Gel Science and Technology, Second Edition.

His service activities in the sol–gel discipline are particularly notable and have been fundamental for his choice as coeditor of JSST. Among the most recent ones we can cite:

  • Treasurer and member of the Board of Directors of the International Sol–gel Society (ISGS), September 2013-present.

  • Chair of the International Selection Committee of the 2015 Ulrich Awards of the ISGS.

  • Member of the Advisory Council to the Research Foundation of the Citry University of New York, September 2014-present.

A. Jitianu is also quite active in organizing meetings and symposia in his field of interest, hybrid organic–inorganic materials. We just list a few of recent ones:

  • MRS Symposium meeting LL: Hybrid Inorganic–Biological Materials April 2013,

  • Materials Science and Technology 2013 Conference, Montreal Canada, October 2013, organizing the symposium Hybrid Organic–Inorganic Materials for Alternative Energy

  • Materials Science and Technology 2015 Conference, Columbus, Ohio, October 2015, organizing the symposium Hybrid Organic–Inorganic Materials for Alternative Energy (II)

  • Materials Science and Technology 2017 Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 2017, organizing the symposium Hybrid Organic–Inorganic Materials for Alternative Energy

  • Materials Science and Technology 2019 Conference, September–October 2019 Portland, OR, organizing the symposium Hybrid Organic–Inorganic Materials for Alternative Energy

  • Organizing the symposium Sol–Gel Glasses at the International Congress on Glass (ICG 2019), Boston, MA, USA

We welcome Andrei Jitianu and wish him all the best for a fruitful career as coeditor of JSST!

Prof. Dr. Michel A. Aegerter

JSST Editor-in-Chief