Yannis C. Yortsos of the University of Southern California Named PNAS Nexus Editor-in-Chief

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announces the appointment of chemical engineer Yannis C. Yortsos as the next editor-in-chief of PNAS Nexus, a selective, open access journal with a focus on innovative and interdisciplinary work across the biological, physical, and social sciences, particularly encompassing engineering and the health sciences. Yortsos succeeds Inaugural Editor-in-Chief Karen Nelson.

Yortsos is dean of the Viterbi School of Engineering and Chester Dolley Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). As dean, he also holds the Zohrab Kaprielian Dean's Chair in Engineering. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2008 and has served as a member of the NAE Council since 2017. He has served on the PNAS Nexus Editorial Board as a deputy editor since May 2022 and as interim editor-in-chief since September 2022.

“The National Academy of Sciences is fortunate to have a leader with the exceptional scholarly reputation and commitment to scientific communication of Yannis Yortsos to guide the next phase of growth for this young journal. His commitment to open access and spanning disciplinary divisions is well aligned with the vision for PNAS Nexus," says NAS President Marcia McNutt.

Yortsos has made fundamental discoveries in fluid flow, transport, and reactions in porous media. He has used statistical physics and applied mathematics to model the interaction of heterogeneity and physicochemical processes. Yortsos received a BS degree from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and MS and PhD degrees from the California Institute of Technology—all in chemical engineering.

Yortsos says, “I look forward to working closely with our NAS and PNAS colleagues as we build PNAS Nexus into an exceptional journal of excellence for the sciences, engineering, and medicine. Entrusting me with this responsibility is gratifying and inspiring.”

Along with colleagues at Duke University and Olin College, in 2009 Yortsos co-founded the Global Grand Challenges Scholars Program, which is aimed at educating students to address pressing challenges in engineering and has been adopted by nearly 100 universities. As a testament to the program’s impact, Yortsos and colleagues received the 2022 Gordon Prize of the NAE. Between 2012 and 2017 Yortsos chaired the Diversity Committee of the Engineering Deans Council, leading an engineering diversity initiative that has since been adopted by more than 250 engineering schools nationwide. From 2018 to 2021, Yortsos was a principal investigator of the National Science Foundation’s gender equity initiative EDGE.

Yortsos has received numerous scientific honors, including honorary membership in the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (2011), associate membership in the Academy of Athens (2013), an honorary degree from Tsinghua University, China (2017), and a Los Angeles area Emmy (2022) for the creation of the documentary Lives not Grades on Engineering Innovation for Global Crises. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

About PNAS Nexus

Launched in 2021, PNAS Nexus is an open access journal that publishes high-quality original research from across the biological, medical, physical, social, and political sciences, as well as engineering and mathematics. Of particular interest are articles with broad, interdisciplinary appeal. A sibling journal to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), PNAS Nexus has an Editorial Board including members of the NAS, the NAE, the National Academy of Medicine, as well as select nonmembers who work in emerging fields not covered by Academy membership.

Open access is foundational to PNAS Nexus. All articles are freely available to read and reuse, with both CC BY 4.0 and CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licenses available. The journal is published by the NAS in partnership with Oxford University Press (OUP).

For more information, contact the PNAS News Office at PNASNews@nas.edu.

About OUP

OUP is the largest university press publisher of open access research. OUP publishes over 80 fully open access journals and more than 100 open access monographs and offers an open access publishing option on over 400 journals. Since 2004, OUP has published over 80,000 open access papers across all major subject areas and publishes more than 1,250 open access articles per month. OUP has been publishing journals for more than a century and has more than 500 years of publishing expertise.