In addition to our very successful special sections on selected topics, I would like to announce the launching of a special series on hot topics relating renewable energy to light. The first one entitled Perovskite-Based Solar Cells will cover a very hot topic in the area of photovoltaics that is gaining a lot of attention and offers a new and a promising enabled technology. The guest editors of this special series are Ana Flavia Nogueira (University of Campinas, Brazil) and Yang Yang (University of California at Los Angeles).

Manuscripts submitted for publication in a special series will undergo the same peer review process received by all submissions to the Journal of Photonics for Energy (JPE). Accepted papers will be published online immediately after copyediting and typesetting, as is the case for all papers published in JPE. However, unlike special sections, the papers in a special series will be published across a series of several issues rather than in one issue. A special series will typically run for a period of a year.

The current special section on Education and Training in Light for Energy will be converted to a special series and will run until the end of this year. This is an unusual topic, where the focus is on novel and unconventional ways of education in this active area of research. Educators and academicians are invited to submit an original research article and/or a tutorial covering this topic (e.g., new techniques and/or novel approaches for teaching this subject, innovative laboratory experiments, etc.). The focus will be on novel and nontraditional courses and laboratory experiments carried out to educate and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.

As JPE grows and diversifies, we welcome new reviewers and recruit additional associate editors who are actively pursuing research and have excellent publication records. If you believe you would enjoy the opportunity to review a manuscript please register at http://jpe.msubmit.net or drop us a note ( jpe@spie.org).

Once more, I would like to thank the SPIE journals staff and the guest editors of the special series, who helped with the launching of this new category on hot topics for the Journal of Photonics for Energy. I hope that the readers of this journal and the research community working in this area will find special series a beneficial and useful means for the dissemination of the latest and greatest experimental and theoretical research studies in the area relating light to renewable energy.