Like every year, this special issue contains the contributions from our editorial team members. I thank all the participants for their contributions in a wide area of topics. It is amazing the depth and breadth of the areas we could cover.
From this year, we have decided to celebrate the contribution of one of our editorial colleagues in each of this special issue. This year we are celebrating the 20 years' contribution of our Associate Editor Professor Anand Pathak. We are very happy and proud that Anand is going strong day by day, thank you Anand for your tireless continuing contribution to the journal!
Very best,
Prof Sudip Sen
Editor-in-Chief
Prof Anand P. Pathak completed his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1971. He is a Fellow of National Academy of Sciences India (NASI) FNA, and IOP (London) F Institute of Physics, as well as a member of Fellowship and C Phys Panel. He is also Fellow of Ion Beam Society of India (FIBSI) and Fellow of International Academy of Physical Sciences (Allahabad) (FIAPS). He has been a member of UGC, India, Physics Panel (June 94–2002). He was the director of a workshop on “Ion Beam Studies of Nano-Materials: Synthesis, Modification and Analysis” held at ICTP Trieste Italy, June 2006. He was the chairman of 18th Int. Conf. Ion Beam Analysis (IBA 2007) Hyderabad held in September 2007. He is an Associate Editor of Radiation Effects and Defects in Solids. He was on Editorial Board of Nuclear Instruments and Methods B (2003–2010). His postdoctoral appointments were in Theoretical Physics Division, AERE, Harewell UK (August 1972 – September 1974), Commissariat A L'Energie-Atomique, Fontenary-aux-Roses, France (October 1974 – December 1976). He has been on the faculty of School of Physics, University of Hyderabad since 1977 where he also served as Dean, school of Physics from February 1992 to February 1996 and then superannuated as Professor on 31st December 2011. During this three and half decades, he spent extended sabbatical periods as Guest Scientist at several institutions worldwide, including Distinguished Research Scientist at CSIRO Australia, Humboldt Fellow in Germany, Chair Professor in Mexico and many more short visits, worldwide. He was CSIR Emeritus Scientist till December 2016. He served as Visiting Professor in IIIT (RGUKT) Basar, Telangana, India (for one and half years) and Sikkim Central University, Gangtok, India (for two years). His research interests are ion solid interactions and ion beam and Laser studies of nano-materials. He has 337 publications (238 International Journals and 74 International and National Refereed Conference Proceedings, 15 Reviews and 10 Books). He has supervised 13 Ph. D. Theses, 10 M. Phil. Theses and numerous M. Sc. dissertations. He is currently a NASI Sr Scientist Platinum Jubilee Fellow since 1st February 2020.