The guest editors are very grateful to all authors for their contributions, which will appeal not only to Fred Brouwer himself but also to a wide range of colleagues. A special expression of gratitude goes to the many reviewers who gave their time for a thorough scrutiny of the submitted manuscripts in a constructive manner. We also extend our thanks to the editors-in-chief and production staff at Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences for making this collection possible.

Doctoral students: As an associate professor from 1987 to 2006 (and beyond), Fred Brouwer acted as ‘co-promotor’ (PhD co-supervisor) of 12 PhD students: Jurriaan Zwier, Sjors Wurpel, Robert Willemse, Saskia van Dijk, Lene Hviid, Xavier Lauteslager, Martin Roest, Natalia Haraszkiewicz, Sandro Fazio, Jacob Baggerman, Bart Weber, Kaj van Vliet. Since becoming a full professor in 2006, Fred has acted as the ‘promotor’ (Ph.D supervisor) of 23 more PhD students: Peter Zoon, Joanna Siekierzycka, Dhiredj Jagesar, Deniz Günbaş, Tanzeela Raja, Van Anh Nguyen, Marcel Plugge, Peter Groen, Chantal Carpentier, Tatu Kumpulainen, Hung-Cheng Chen, Tomislav Shuhina, Mina Raeisolsadati Oskouei, Dongdong Zheng, Dina Petrova, Olivier Lugier, Jarich Haitjema, Yu Zhang, Lianjia Wu, Daire Gibbons, Zoi Melissari, Neha Thakur and Najmeh Sadegh. (This list is made with the best intensions, apologies for potential omissions. A list of all MSc students and post-docs is beyond our grasp). There are three more students “in the pipeline”: Maximilian Paradiz Dominguez, Begüm Demirkurt, and Chao Chun Hsu who should defend their PhD theses soon.