We are introducing a new section entitled “News and Views” for the front pages of JASMS to provide a service for the readership of JASMS and the members of ASMS. The purpose of this section is to provide you with information about the ASMS and its membership. We will use this section for book and ASMS conference reviews and for obituaries. These materials will not be published at the end of an issue; rather they will move up to the front pages but can still be cited. Other items that we will cover are announcements of conferences and meetings (e.g., Gordon Conferences, MS society meetings in other countries), and brief sketches of members who win other, non-ASMS awards (e.g., Field and Franklin of the ACS, Standing Award). We also plan “visits” to the laboratories of young investigators who win an ASMS award to introduce them to the membership and explain their research goals. At the other end of the career spectrum, we plan to publish short biosketches of investigators who are retiring. We are also considering short articles on improving MS education and on reaching out to non-scientists to explain our subject and its impact.

This section will have a new associate editor, Gavin E. Reid, associate professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI. Gavin was first introduced to mass spectrometry while working as a research assistant with Professor Richard Simpson in the Joint Protein Sequencing Laboratory at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Melbourne, Australia (1987–1997), where he established and operated what was only the second ESI-triple quadruple instrument in the country at the time, for peptide sequencing applications. He obtained an Associate Diploma in Applied Science in 1991 from the Swinburne College of TAFE, then went on to earn a Post Graduate Diploma in Science in 1997 and a PhD in Chemistry in 2000 from the University of Melbourne, under the joint supervision of Professor Richard A.J. O’Hair and Professor Simpson, followed by post-doctoral research from 2000–2002 with Professor Scott McLuckey at Purdue University. After initially establishing his independent research career in Australia as an assistant member at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Gavin moved to Michigan State in 2004 as an assistant professor, where he was promoted to the rank of associate professor with tenure in 2009.

The research being pursued in Gavin’s lab is fundamentally driven by a desire to understand, and ultimately control, the mechanisms and other factors that influence the gas-phase fragmentation reactions of peptide and lipid ions, and to apply this knowledge toward the development of novel proteome and lipidome analysis strategies to understand the role of proteins and lipids in disease, including cancer, diabetes, and diabetic complications. To date, this work has resulted in 133 peer-reviewed publications, presentations at over 70 national and international conferences, 40 invited seminars, and three patents. Gavin’s research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Australian Research Council, and several industry groups. He was awarded the Bowie Medal from the Australian and New Zealand Society for Mass Spectrometry in 2011, an American Society for Mass Spectrometry Research Award in 2007, and a National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2006. Gavin is currently the member-at-large for Education on the Board of Directors of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and is a member of the editorial advisory boards of the JASMS and the European Journal of Mass Spectrometry.

We introduce the first edition of the “News and Views” in this issue and welcome Gavin as the associate editor responsible for this section. We are grateful for Gavin’s willingness to help JASMS. Some of you may remember that he was recognized as one of our “best reviewers” for 2009–2010. Gavin is receptive to new ideas, both specific and general, on improving and extending “News and Views,” and we invite you to welcome him and send him (reid@chemistry.msu.edu) your suggestions and ideas for articles in our new section.