July 10, 2013 — Professor Majed Chergui has been appointed Editor-in-chief of the open-access and online-only journal recently jointly created by the American Institute of Physics and the American Crystallographic Association.

The dream of every biologist, chemist or physicist is to observe in “real-time” the structural changes of the systems they study, be it in a biological function, a chemical reaction or a physical change. To do this, tools are necessary that can resolve molecular structures, which are about one-tenth of a billionth of a meter, but also that follow the atomic motions within them, which are of the order of tens of a millionth of a billionth of a second.

Thanks to technological developments worldwide during the last 10 years, in which Switzerland particularly distinguishes itself by its dynamism, the dream has become reality. New instruments and methods, for example free electron lasers (FEL) or ultrafast electron diffraction, offer new perspectives for the study of both static and dynamic molecular structures.
However, there are only two FELs in operation to this day, one in the United States, the other in Japan, and two more are under construction in Germany and Switzerland at the Paul-Scherrer Institute (Villigen, AG).

In order to capture these new developments and give them a forum where they would be represented, the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and the American Crystallographic Association (ACA) have decided to launch a new journal, entitled "Structural Dynamics".

Because of his contributions to this field, Professor Majed Chergui was chosen as Editor-in-chief. Indeed, he pioneered two new methods of structural dynamics: ultrafast X-ray spectroscopy and multidimensional spectroscopy in the ultraviolet. He will be one of the only European editors of the numerous scientific journals published by AIP.