Andrea Alù, incoming Editor-in-Chief of Optical Materials Express, describes his vision for the Journal.

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I am very excited and honored to become the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of Optical Materials Express (OMEx), taking over from Prof. Alexandra Boltasseva, and Prof. David Hagan before her, and the wonderful job they did in establishing this Journal as a reputable, professional, and fast publication in our community. Thanks to their leadership, OMEx is now a reference for research articles at the intersection of optics and materials science, an area of research that has been growing rapidly in recent years.

Light-matter interactions are naturally weak, and the search for new material playgrounds to enhance these interactions has become crucial for the growing needs of photonic technologies. Engineered materials and metamaterials, extreme nonlinear optical phenomena, polaritonics, tunable materials, ultrafast processes, and large refractive indexes are some of the most active areas of research in the arena of optical materials, all of them of key importance for basic science and for applied technologies. In my new role, I hope to engage the relevant scientific communities and attract the best research in these and other topic areas, and further grow the reputation and relevance of OMEx.

The highly interdisciplinary nature of our Journal, at the cross-section of optics, photonics, and materials science, necessitates a healthy competition with many other journals. In my term as EiC, I will follow in the footsteps of Prof. Boltasseva and work on initiatives to attract the best articles in these fields, as well as the attention of a broad readership. I aim to further enhance the relevance of the Journal, offering a fast and rigorous review process and making OMEx a valuable, open-access reference in which to publish your best work. I also plan to enhance the visibility of our published papers to make sure they reach the wider readership interested in these topics. Together with the excellent editorial board, I will be continuously on the lookout for emerging research directions, and welcome your ideas. Our editorial board warmly welcomes suggestions for Review, Perspective, and Opinion articles, and for Feature Issues on up-and-coming topics of interest. We also welcome input and submissions from scientists from neighboring disciplines that may provide stimulating ideas and directions for our readership.

I am particularly fond of Optica Publishing Group journals, run by a professional society with a mission to care for the future of our community. In this context, I believe that we have a tremendous opportunity to attract new readers and authors, stressing our non-profit nature, the quality of our processes and output, the relatively low publication fees, the open access nature of many of our publications, and the support that the society provides to the new generation of scientists. I welcome feedback from our members, authors, reviewers, and readers.

To conclude, I cannot stress enough how excited I am to start my work as the new EiC of OMEx. I firmly believe that the Journal is in a great position to take a leading role in this interdisciplinary field of growing importance. I very much look forward to working together with the broad optics community, and to considering your best research for publication soon!

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