The New Year marks an important editorial milestone for Science of the Total Environment. I am delighted to announce that from 1 January 2022 Elena Paoletti will be joining Damià Barceló, Jay Gan and Philip Hopke as STOTEN’s fourth co-Editor-in-Chief.
It gives me great please to have the opportunity and privilege to welcome Elena to her new role, having previously joined the team as an Associate Editor in 2016 and becoming additionally responsible for Special Issues a few years later. Elena has been Research Director at the National Research Council of Italy since 2010, and is also visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Science of Beijing, chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Forest Institute (EFI), member of the extended IUFRO (International Union of Forest Research Organizations) Board, and Vice-President of SISEF (Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology). At the University of Firenze, Elena earned a Laurea magistrale in Forest Science and PhD in Agricultural Biology, before completing a post doc there too. Her main research interests are plant ecosystems and abiotic stressors, with focus on pollution and forests. She is author of around 300 publications, of which 243 are recorded in Scopus and which have been cited almost 7,500 times with an h-index of 49. We are confident that Elena will be an excellent ambassador for STOTEN and that she will continue to develop and sustain our Journal, and wish her every success and enjoyment in her new role.