**Meet the editor**

Mohammad Mahdi Najafpour received his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2009. Mahdi is a recipient of several awards and fellowships, notably the gold medal of the National Chemistry Olympiad in 2004; he ranked first in the Khwarizmi Youth Festival in 2010, and he was selected for the TWAS young affiliateship (2014),

the Al-Biruni award by the Academy of Sciences of Iran (2015), and he was selected among the best researchers in Iran by Ministry of Science of Iran (2015). Currently, he is a faculty member in Chemistry in the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS) (Zanjan, Iran). As a nanobioinorganic chemist, Mahdi believes that with learning strategies from natural systems, design of modern catalysts for all reactions using only earth-abundant, low-cost and environment-friendly metal ions is possible. Mahdi and his research group explore transition metal compounds such as water-oxidizing catalysts for artificial photosynthesis. He is the author of over 160 publications in these and other areas.
