We are pleased to announce that Dr. Ren-You Gan has been appointed Section Editor-in-Chief of the Section “Probiotic Strains and Fermentation” in Fermentation (ISSN: 2311-5637).

Dr. Ren-You Gan is a Principal Investigator (PI) at the Singapore Institute of Food and Biotechnology Innovation (SIFBI), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore. His current research mainly focuses on probiotics and food functional ingredients, including (1) the discovery of probiotic candidate strains (e.g., Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium) from fermented foods and gut microbiota, and the evaluation of their probiotic and functional potential; (2) the clarification of the interaction between food functional ingredients (e.g., phytochemicals and polysaccharides) and gut microbiota, as well as the underlying mechanisms; and (3) the development of functional food formulations with specific health benefit by integrating probiotics and food functional ingredients. He was selected as a Highly Cited Researcher for “Agricultural/Food Sciences” by ClarivateTM in 2021 and 2022.

The following is a short Q&A with Dr. Ren-You Gan, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views of the research area:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take on the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief?

The journal Fermentation is an international open access journal with a good reputation and widespread recognition. Concerning its Section “Probiotic Strains and Fermentation”, its topics match my current research well. In my opinion, an excellent probiotic strain is the core necessity for downstreaming fermentation and functional product development, such as probiotics, synbiotics, and postbiotics. Therefore, this research field can be pretty important and I would like to work together with other scientists in this field to further promote its fast development.

2. What is your vision for the Section?

Through this Section as an open platform, I expect that more excellent probiotic strains can be discovered and published, and that their fermentation technologies can be shared to support the translational applications of probiotic strains in the development of healthy and functional foods as well as food functional ingredients.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?

It is expected that the demand for probiotics will continue to grow after the COVID-19 pandemic as people become more aware of nutrition and health, which will drive the continuous R&D of this field of research. From my viewpoint, one promising interest is the development of precise nutrition and personalized nutrition based on more targeted probiotic strains or postbiotics. In addition, there is a growing interest in the use of fermentation as a way to produce sustainable and healthy food products as well as food functional ingredients.

We warmly welcome Dr. Ren-You Gan as the Section Editor-in-Chief of “Probiotic Strains and Fermentation”, and we wish him every success in his new position.