Editor’s Preface

Editor’s Preface

Moudgil Brij M.

Chairman of American Editorial Board

University of Florida, USA

As Chair of the American Editorial Board, I am pleased to introduce the KONA Powder & Particle Journal No. 38. In continuation of the past tradition, this issue presents high quality review articles and original research papers. The journal is reaching out to an ever-expanding cadre of researchers as illustrated by the diversity of disciplines represented by the authors of the articles. KONA continues to serve academic and industry researchers from physical sciences to engineering and beyond. Furthermore, increased recognition of KONA as a high quality journal is a testimonial that recent changes in the review process, format and accessibility are moving in the right direction.

Powder technology continues to be recognized as an important business with tremendous global opportunity. Technological advances in the field are demanding more complex particle design and powder properties. An example would be advanced sensor technologies that require multifunctional particle platforms with high precision to meet lower and lower detection limits with high reliability. If designing such particles is a challenge, it is even a bigger challenge to manufacture them on large scale. Most often large-scale production of precision particles remains an empirical exercise. Hopefully, advances in simulation and modelling, which is fast approaching practical scale systems, would lead to new scale-up paradigms.

With diversification of the disciplinary base of particle and powder researchers, it is critical for KONA to reach out to young researchers with different professional backgrounds, and also to publish more state-of-the-art review articles – a hallmark tradition of KONA over the several decades. In this regard, KONA may invite academic and industry researchers, especially those who are at the forefront of scientific and technological advances, to publish comprehensive review articles in the journal. These articles will further reinforce KONA’s position as a reliable source for powder and particle related information. Additionally, KONA may also invite young researchers who are within a few years of receiving their advanced degrees to publish overview articles closely related to their particle and powder related research endeavors.

While many institutions of higher learning were already offering select degree programs and courses online, the sudden emergence of the pandemic compelled delivery of almost all courses online, practically overnight. As challenging as it has been for instructors to suddenly shift to the online mode, it is equally if not more challenging for the students to be thrust into this new learning environment. That said, it is not all doom and gloom! This unique situation certainly provides an opportunity to rejuvenate and redesign the course materials in a way that is meaningful to the students without losing the rigor of learning the subject matter. Simply repackaging the old material into digital delivery mode will not do. We can expect that education’s new business model will drive the online delivery mode for most courses, with in-person learning confined to only a handful of courses.

However, serious challenges exist with online learning platforms, accessibility being a critical one. Many university students, even in developed countries, lack the internet bandwidth and other resources which their peers may have. Another serious challenge is almost assured disruptions due to future pandemics and climate change-related disasters. Mitigating such risks requires the design of flexible curriculum for completing coursework and degree programs on the academic front.

As there is a paradigm shift in knowledge creation and delivery from traditionally strong powder and particle research centers and institutes to individuals and smaller group efforts, acquisition of deep understanding of complex systems may be at risk. However, this challenge may be overcome to an extent with the availability of more powerful and robust search engines and other IT mediated modalities. Such resources can hopefully enhance the existing curriculum and enable development of new teaching modes to train the next generation of powder and particle technology professionals.

Overall, I believe that harnessing the application of AI/ML and advanced computational tools has the potential of revitalizing both the instruction and application of particle and powder technology.

I invite you to explore and enjoy this issue of KONA. Let us continue to work together and make KONA ever more relevant and reliable as a source of particle and powder technology knowledge and know-how.

Brij M. Moudgil

Chair, American Editorial Board

September 23, 2020