The American Physical Society (APS) is delighted to announce the appointment of David Scanlon, Professor of Computational Materials Design, University College London, United Kingdom, to the role of Lead Editor of PRX Energy, APS’s new, highly selective, open access journal covering energy science and technology. Professor Scanlon will serve as the inaugural Lead Editor of the journal, which will open for submissions December 7, 2021 and offer an introductory promotion in which all article publication charges (APCs) will be paid by APS through the end of 2022.
Professor Scanlon’s primary research interests and experience are in the electronic structure and defect chemistry of emerging materials for a wide variety of applications, including but not limited to: transparent conducting oxides (TCOs), photovoltaics (PV), thermoelectrics (TEs), photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting, solid state lighting, X-ray and γ-ray radiation detectors, Li-ion batteries, solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) and topological insulators. A recurring theme in his group’s research is the use of rational chemical design to predict the properties of novel inorganic solids for the above applications, and then the full electronic structure and defect chemistry characterization of these materials to test their application suitability.
As Lead Editor of PRX Energy, Professor Scanlon will focus on positioning the new journal to serve the diverse, multidisciplinary energy science and technology research community spanning traditional disciplines including physics, chemistry, materials, engineering, and technology.
“I am incredibly excited to be the inaugural Lead Editor of PRX Energy. With the climate emergency currently dominating our newsfeeds, there has never been a more exciting or more crucial time to be working in the energy field. The Physical Review has provided a venue for breakthrough research since 1893, and now PRX Energy provides a much needed home for high quality, innovative energy research in the Physical Review family. Being part of the PRX stable, PRX Energy will give center stage to the most exciting research from our multidisciplinary community, with the complete accessibility of open access.”
Professor Scanlon joined the Department of Chemistry at UCL in 2011 to take up a Ramsay Fellowship, after completing his undergraduate degree in Computational Chemistry in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 2006, which was followed by working in the research group of Professor Graeme W. Watson in TCD. His Ph.D. research focused on investigating oxides with catalytic applications, as well as studying the fundamental properties of transparent conducting oxides (TCOs). After successfully defending his thesis, he received a Thomas Young Centre Junior Research Fellowship to visit UCL for three weeks for a collaboration with Professor Catlow in spring 2011.
Professor Scanlon has been the recipient of the Royal Irish Academy Young Chemists prize for 2011, for “the most outstanding Irish Ph.D. thesis of 2011 in the area of the chemical sciences,” in addition to an honorable mention in the 2012 IUPAC World Prize for Young Chemists competition. He was awarded the RSC Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize for the “development and application of computational techniques to understanding and predicting the properties of functional semiconductors for energy applications” in 2015, and in June 2015, was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2019, Professor Scanlon was made an Outstanding Referee of the APS, and in 2021, he was awarded 2021 RSC Materials Chemistry Division Early Career Award for “contributions to materials modelling of conducting oxides”.
“I am very excited to welcome Professor Scanlon as the founding Lead Editor for PRX Energy,” said Michael Thoennessen, Editor in Chief of the Physical Review Journals. “He is an outstanding scientist with broad expertise covering many different subfields that make significant advances to energy research. PRX Energy will serve as a platform for these diverse communities to communicate and share their latest innovative research results. Professor Scanlon is ideally situated to lead our efforts for PRX Energy to achieve its goals.”
