It is a great honor to have been selected as the new Editor-in-Chief and Deputy Editor of Biomedical Optics Express (BOEx), Optica Publishing Group’s principal journal for the biomedical optics and biophotonics community. We both have enthusiastically followed the progress of BOEx since the very early days, to which we have proudly contributed as authors, reviewers, and editorial board members.

Because of our esteemed authors, BOEx has been a leading journal in the biomedical optics and biophotonics community for more than 10 years. This success is also attributed to the dynamic and open-minded Optica (previously OSA) management and publishing team, along with the exceptionally engaged team of worldwide international experts serving in the editorial and international advisory boards. This setting is powered by a broad pool of very competent and dedicated reviewers, who are the true engines of the journal’s high quality and reputation.

Before looking at what is coming ahead, we would like to take this opportunity to congratulate and thank our predecessors, Prof. Christoph Hitzenberger and Prof. Adam Gibson, for their terrific work and achievements. Under their leadership and building upon the solid foundation set by the founding Editor-in-Chief Prof. Joseph Izatt and Deputy Editor Dr. Gregory Faris, BOEx has become the go-to-place for the dissemination of new findings and new applications of biomedical optics and biophotonics in the community. We greatly value their commitment and passion to the journal with the clear objective to solicit the best scientific findings in our field, review them rigorously, and deliver the research timely and accurately to our readers.

Building upon the legacy and tradition of our predecessors, our main mission is to continue attracting impactful papers and offering the best experience to our authors and readers for rapid and broad dissemination of high-quality research in the biomedical optical and biophotonics field. We intend to also provide a special focus on clinical translation and imaging. BOEx has been publishing for 12 years, and as a relatively “young journal”, it now faces new frontiers for advancing optics and photonics to be applied in biology and medicine. We live in an age of rapid social networks with ever-growing demand for disseminating new information. In parallel, optics and photonics also offer truly disruptive technologies for improving the quality of human well-being. Thus, it is imperative to maintain the excellence of BOEx to grow our global community and nurture the younger generation.

We strive to support authors throughout the publication process. The interdisciplinary nature of BOEx and the rapid evolution of the digital age bring new opportunities, but also new challenges for connecting different disciplines with a commonly understandable language. To respond to this challenge, we will work to evolve the journal's scope to address new trends, especially those relevant to the clinical community, without losing its identity. We will continue to expand the space for special publications—for example, topical reviews, tutorial/perspective papers, and feature issues—from experts representing new topics and frontiers. We will also extend our efforts to establish and implement reproducible research policies.

We will actively seek new technical disruptions and embrace them through rapid and open publications to benefit life science and medicine. We will reach out to the promising next generation of leaders in the field, hearing the voices of emerging early career researchers, and will give them every possible opportunity to contribute to the development and content of the journal.

We are convinced that with the rapid evolution of the digital age and interdisciplinary technologies, we are being offered tremendous opportunities to shape the future of our field and make a visible impact with the journal. BOEx has an excellent peer-review system to ensure that it remains the leading global source of high-quality papers in the field of biophotonics and biomedical optics. Therefore, we are thrilled to work with all of you—readers, authors, reviewers, Editorial Board members, and BOEx professional staff—to support and promote the further development of BOEx as the ideal platform to report new scientific findings and exchange new ideas. Together, we will continue the success of BOEx and bring it to the next level. We welcome your comments, suggestions, and feedback at boemss@optica.org.

Thank you for your attention and of course, Happy New Year!

Ricky Wang, Editor-in-Chief

Sina Farsiu, Deputy Editor