The American Chemical Society (ACS) has announced that Dr. Kenneth (Kennie) M. Merz will assume the role of Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling in January 2014. Merz is a professor in the departments of chemistry and of biochemistry and molecular biology at Michigan State University.
Dr. Merz will succeed Dr. William L. Jorgenson, who will retire from the journal at the end of this year. Jorgenson, Sterling Professor of Chemistry at Yale University, served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling since 2004. He will assist with the transition and remain with the journal in his current role through the end of 2013.
Merz joined the Pennsylvania State University as Assistant Professor in 1989 and served as Professor of Chemistry from 1998 to 2005. While at the Pennsylvania State University, he also worked as Senior Director at Pharmacopeia, Inc. He joined the University of Florida in 2005 where he was the Edmund H. Prominski Professor of Chemistry. In 2013, Merz moved to Michigan State University where he now holds appointments in the Department of Chemistry and in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He also serves as Director of the Institute of Cyber Enabled Research. He is an ACS Fellow.
Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling publishes research reporting new methodology and/or important applications in the fields of chemical informatics and molecular modelling. Specific topics include the representation and computer-based searching of chemical databases; molecular modelling; computer-aided molecular design of new materials, catalysts, or ligands; development of new computational methods or efficient algorithms for chemical software; and biopharmaceutical chemistry including analyses of biological activity and other issues related to drug discovery.
The journal is ranked #2 in citations in the Computer Science, Information Systems category with 11,250 total cites in 2012. Also indexed in the Multidisciplinary Chemistry and the Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications categories, the journal recorded an Impact Factor of 4.304 as reported in the 2012 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2013).
