Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers announces the appointment of Professor Hana El-Samad, PhD as the Editor-in-Chief of its new marquee journal GEN Biotechnology, launching in early 2022.
Credit: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers announces the appointment of Professor Hana El-Samad, PhD as the Editor-in-Chief of its new marquee journal GEN Biotechnology, launching in early 2022.
Leveraging the outstanding biotechnology network built by Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (GEN) over the past 40 years, GEN Biotechnology aims to be the premier peer-reviewed journal publishing outstanding original research and perspectives across all facets of the biotech industry.
Professor El-Samad is currently the Kuo Family Endowed Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Born and raised in Lebanon, Dr. El-Samad moved to the United States for graduate school, earning a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering at Iowa State University and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). In 2005, she joined UCSF as a member of the Sandler Fellows Program, which grants talented recent PhD graduates Principal Investigator status and support to start their lab.
“I am honored and very excited to take the reins of GEN Biotechnology,” said Dr. El-Samad. “I want to make this an untraditional journal that pursues both a scientific mission of the highest standards and our increasing obligation to inform a wider population of the amazing opportunities and progress provided by biotechnology to our health and planet.”
“In addition, I am committed to building a journal that invests from inception in elevating diverse voices to promote equitable participation in biotechnology and STEM, including in the science we publish and the talent we recruit to help us referee and amplify the most exciting science,” Dr. El-Samad continued.
Through a combination of theory and experiments, Dr. El-Samad’s research seeks to understand the operational principles of biological networks. Her lab designs programmable, plug-and-play cellular circuits that can be broadly deployed for therapeutic and biotechnological applications, including cell-based immunotherapies, metabolic engineering, and bioremediation.
Dr. El-Samad is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the Donald P. Eckman Award in 2011 and the CSB2 prize in Systems Biology in 2012. She is a former Packard Fellow, a Paul. G. Allen Distinguished Investigator and was named a senior investigator of the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub in 2017. In 2020, Dr. El-Samad was elected as an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) fellow.
“We are thrilled to welcome Professor Hana El-Samad as the Editor-in-Chief of GEN Biotechnology,” says Kevin Davies, PhD, Executive Editor of GEN Biotechnology. “We are inspired by Hana’s impeccable research credentials, her perch at the intersection of academia and industry, and her vocal leadership in championing women and diversity in science. She will inspire a talented editorial team and set the bar high for this journal. We look forward to implementing Hana’s vision and ideas as we gear up for launch in 2022 and beyond.”
GEN Biotechnology will publish groundbreaking research in all aspects of biotechnology, including agbiotech, drug discovery, gene therapy, environmental biotechnology, precision medicine, single-cell biology, and more. In addition, GEN Biotechnology will feature an array of provocative frontmatter content including editorials, analyses, and commentary.
Dr. El-Samad will lead a growing international editorial advisory board of diverse visionaries in biotech who have thrown their support behind GEN Biotechnology, including Kiana Aran (Keck Graduate Institute), Lola Eniola-Adefeso (University of Michigan), Rong Fan (Yale School of Medicine), Karmella Haynes (Emory University), Christopher Mason (Weill Cornell Medicine), Laura Soucek (VHIO, Barcelona), Tom Ellis (Imperial College, London), Tejal Desai (UCSF), and Fyodor Urnov (Innovative Genomics Institute).
GEN Biotechnology is actively recruiting research papers for its inaugural issue, which will be published in early 2022. Pre-submission inquiries can be sent to [email protected] For further information, please visit the GEN Biotechnology website.
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About the Publisher
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including The CRISPR Journal, Human Gene Therapy, Stem Cells and Development, Cellular Reprogramming, and OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology. Its biotechnology trade magazine, GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News), was the first in its field and is today the industry’s most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm’s more than 100 journals, books, and trade publications is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.
