New Year Editorial 2013

Curt Wentrup was educated at the University of Copenhagen (Cand. Scient. 1966; D.Sc. 1976) and the Australian National University (Ph.D. 1969). After post-doctoral periods with Hans Dahn (Lausanne), W. M. Jones (Gainesville, FL), and Maitland Jones, Jr (Princeton), he held an assistant professorship at the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland, and a professorship at the Universität Marburg, Germany, before returning to Australia in 1985 as Professor and chair of organic chemistry and head of the organic chemistry section at the University of Queensland, where he is now Emeritus Professor. Since 2008 he is editor-in-chief of the Australian Journal of Chemistry, and since 2009 chair of the National Committee for Chemistry of the Australian Academy of Science. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and has published over 300 research papers. His interests are in the fields of both experimental and computational chemistry of reactive intermediates and unusual molecules using photochemistry, flash vacuum thermolysis, and microwave-induced chemical reactions, in particular chemistry of nitrenes, carbenes, nitrile ylides and nitrile imines, pericyclic rearrangements of cyanates, isocyanates, thio- and isothiocyanates, and nitrile oxides and sulfides, and the chemistry of extended cumulenes. He collaborates extensively with groups in Australia and Europe and frequently holds visiting professorships in Europe.

Professor Nicolas Voelcker, new Associate Editor. After completing his B.Sc. at the University of Saarland (1993) and his M.Sc. at the RWTH Aachen (1995) in Germany, Nico did his Ph.D. thesis (1999) in polymer surface chemistry at the German Wool Research Institute under Professor Hartwig Höcker. He received postdoctoral fellowships to work in the area of bioorganic chemistry under Professor Reza Ghadiri at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. In 2001 he became a Lecturer at Flinders University, an Associate Professor in 2006, and a full Professor in 2008. From 2008 to 2011, he was the Associate Head of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Flinders University. Since 2012, he is a Professor in Chemistry and Materials Science at the Mawson Institute of the University of South Australia.