So now I’m a Development editor!

I got the call and immediately said yes. What a thrill to be asked to join the best developmental biology journal there is! Then I talked to some colleagues afterwards and one said “but that’s a LOT of work!!”. Well yes, but it’s worth it. See, Development published my first paper as an independent PI, and it’s the journal that I have probably most read in my career. So I care deeply about it. Plus, being asked to join such an illustrious group of folks, themselves preceded by a pantheon of developmental biologists, how could I say no?

Aside from being honoured by the request, I see this as a mission of sorts. Developmental Biology, as a discipline, and Development as a journal, are vibrant and growing, and rapidly evolving. Indeed, just in the last few months, I’ve eagerly read at least a dozen of papers in Development that have excited and invigorated me. Other journals have recently published some groundbreaking developmental biology papers. The field is alive and strong, and this journal has one of the most important roles in bringing the most exciting discoveries in developmental biology to light.

My personal mission as editor is to bring some of the best and most exciting papers in developmental biology to this journal. My specialty is heart development and more recently stem cell biology and chromatin-based regulation, but I am excited about many aspects of development. The stem cell aspect to developmental biology is one that has recently become very fashionable and is indeed an important and emerging part of our field. In this regard, I am certainly keenly scoping out stem cell-related stories to bring to Development. But I am really mostly very much driven to bring the most interesting and illuminating developmental biology papers to our journal, and get them the broadest possible exposure. For this I need your best work submitted, and your best minds as reviewers! In return I will be keenly selective, but fair and rapid; all the hallmarks that you have come to expect from Development!

I look forward to the many papers I will see come across my desk, and to helping shepherd your best work in Development!

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