The beginning of a new year is customarily a time for both retrospection and anticipation. Looking back on 2019 from an Optical Engineering perspective, one event that stands out to me is the retirement of Eric Pepper. For those of you who may not know, Eric was most recently the Director of Publications of SPIE. Prior to his retirement in November, he devoted a 37-year career of service to SPIE in numerous areas of publications, including serving as managing editor for Optical Engineering. Over the past decade, I have been privileged to work with Eric, to get to know him as a professional and a colleague, and to draw from his extensive knowledge of the scientific publications field. He has been a respectable leader for the Society, a true gentleman with great integrity, and an outstanding mentor to me. He will certainly be missed, but his legacy will live on through the many he touched over the course of his remarkable career.
Looking forward, the future of Optical Engineering remains bright. Despite Eric’s departure, we have an outstanding SPIE staff who run this journal like clockwork, we have enjoyed great stability and dedication from our cadre of senior editors, and we benefit from the outstanding services of our editorial board and the large number of reviewers who volunteer their expertise on behalf of the journal and the Society. The journal continues its steady improvement according to most objective measures, including an impact factor at an all-time high, and I am thankful to all of you who have played a vital part in that.
I would specifically like to recognize all of the Optical Engineering reviewers who volunteered their services in 2019, a comprehensive list of whom is provided in this issue. According to my custom, I identified ten of our top reviewers based on a statistical analysis of manuscript review performance along with assessments and recommendations from the editorial board. Each has reviewed multiple Optical Engineering manuscripts over the past year, accepted a majority of review requests, completed their reviews on time, consistently achieved strong ratings from the associate editors overseeing the peer review process, and regularly provided detailed and thorough manuscript reviews.
After careful consideration, the following individuals, identified by name, affiliation, country, and area of expertise, are recognized as the top ten Optical Engineering reviewers for 2019:
1. Dr. Travis Axtell, Ball Aerospace, United States (machine vision)
2. Dr. Indrasen Bhattacharya, University of California Berkeley, United States (nanophotonics)
3. Dr. Chen Chen, Chongqing University, China, (optical communications)
4. Mr. Allen Earman, Raxium, United States (optoelectronics, fiber optics)
5. Dr. Joachim Hein, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany (lasers)
6. Dr. Haibin Huang, China Electronics Technology Group, China (optical communications)
7. Prof. Norbert Lindlein, University of Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany (optical design)
8. Dr. Suodong Ma, Soochow University, China (optical testing)
9. Dr. Nicolaie Pavel, National Institute for Lasers, Plasma, and Radiation Physics, Romania (lasers)
10. Dr. Jianjun Yu, ZTE USA, United States (optical communications)
If you have been reading these annual tributes to our top reviewers, you may recognize a few names from years past who deserve repeat recognition due to their sustained outstanding service over multiple years.
Please join me in thanking our staff, editorial board, guest editors, and reviewers for another year of great service, and giving special thanks to Eric Pepper for a career of exceptional contributions to SPIE.
