Marshall R. Brennan (PhD, '15, Fout) has been named the inaugural editor of Device, a new applied physical science journal from Cell Press, home of scientific publications Cell, Chem, and Joule.
Device (@Device_CP) will be a single title focusing on the integration of disciplines to create the technologies of tomorrow.
The founder of preprint server ChemRxiv and a former product manager for deep tech startups, Brennan graduated with his PhD in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Texas at Austin before transitioning to academic publishing. He was as an editor for Nature Chemistry, founded ChemRxiv, and served as the scientific director for the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening. Afterward, he held positions leading product teams to building AI/ML tools for automated and “self-driving” laboratories and hardware augmentation for liquid handling robots.
“I’m returning to publishing with the idea that I want to use the skills that I developed working at startups to improve the research sector broadly,” he said in a Cell Press news release. “There are systemic opportunities to bring together different parts of the technology development pipeline earlier and there are a lot of different stakeholders that need to be working together to get things done. I wanted to work at a publication that would be high-enough profile where the decisions I make and the papers I choose get enough attention for people to take the work seriously.”
Brennan aims for Device to be the breakthrough journal to support device and application-orientated research, including applied physics, applied materials, nanotechnology, robotics, energy research, chemistry, biotechnology and biomedical sciences, photonics, electronics, and engineering. Readers can expect the latest on inventions of all scales and stages, from electronics that can fuel the Internet of things to biomedical materials that better consider sustainability, and everything in between.
“Device needs to be a journal that is catered to the needs of the community, meeting authors and readers where they are as opposed to where we as publishers think they necessarily should be,” Brennan said. “We’re going to say, if you’re working on a device, then the things that are important to you are the things that we’re going to champion. This can be as simple as expanding the scope of the journal to reflect what these researchers are doing or allowing the supplemental information to include the cutting-edge datasets that they’re working with.”
Over his career, Brennan has been recognized with the ACS Catalyst Award, the SLAS New Product Award, and, in 2014, as one of Chemistry & Engineering News’s “Top 20 Chemists Worth Following on Twitter.” He can be followed on @Organometallica.