A Message From the Outgoing Editor-in-Chief

As my term as the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoT-J) has ended, I would like to share my appreciation for all of you, including authors and IoT-J team. I have been serving as the EiC since 1 January 2020, just before the pandemic. I am thankful that the pandemic is mostly behind us, and I am happy that our editorial board members have been able to work on making the Journal successful during that difficult time. It has been a challenging time for all the authors and the entire editorial team. The coronavirus pandemic ushered in mask mandates, quarantines, school and business closures, and so on, devastatingly impacting everyone's lives. When I started to serve as the EiC, succeeding former EICs Prof. Sherman Shen and Dr. Chongang Wang, it was predictable that the pandemic impact would hurt the submissions and interfere with the editors' engagement in the review process. At that time, I felt that there were many and varied challenges in front of us.