Editorial

This issue publishes some of the papers that were presented at the International Workshop on Piezoelectric Materials and Applications (IWPMA) and Energy Conversion Materials and Devices (ECMD) 2016 (Jeju, Korea; August, 2016, http://iwpma2016.com). Next issue will also cover a few papers from these two excellent meetings held last year. Papers were refereed in accordance with the standards established for the Journal. Over the years, IWPMA has become the world’s leading platform for discussing the advances in the field of piezoelectric materials and applications.

IWPMA 2017 will be held in conjunction with 12th Annual Energy Harvesting Workshop and 1st Annual Energy Harvesting Society Meeting from September 11–14, 2017 at The Westin Tysons Corner, Falls Church, VA, USA. Below we provide brief information related to these meetings/workshop for our readers.

IWPMA provides a forum to bring together specialists from both piezoelectric materials and applications communities. The first IWPMA was held at the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) in Seoul, Korea from March 29–31, 2004. It helped to consolidate the idea of an annual workshop in the field of piezoelectric materials and their applications in actuators. The main thematic focus was on ultrasonic motors, actuators, medical devices and various aspects of material processing. Since then, the workshop has become prestigious forum for discussing the advances in piezoelectric materials and their applications.

First and second Energy Harvesting Workshop (EHW) was held in Fort Worth, TX, in January 2006 and 2007 respectively. The workshop covered presentations on vibration, thermal, magnetic and light energy harvesting. Various applications were discussed including structural health monitoring, wireless sensor networks and unmanned vehicles. Since then, this workshop has been highly successful in bringing the academic community from around the world together year after year. In these last few years, workshop has also been held in China and Germany. Energy harvesting has become the key to the future of wireless sensor and actuator networks for a variety of applications including monitoring of temperature, humidity, light, and location of person in the building, chemical/gas sensor, structural health monitoring, powering accelerometers, strain gauge and pressure sensors and traffic signal lighting. This workshop has been serving extremely important role in ensuring that progress continues to be made in meeting the expectations for self-powered wireless sensors.

Energy Harvesting Society (EHS) is a non-profit organization of international professionals, researchers, and scientists with the goal of advancing the interdisciplinary education, outreach activities, and technology in the field of energy. EHS provides a dynamic and interactive platform for the global community of energy related researchers and professionals to advance their learning and practice through knowledge-sharing and timely dissemination. A key role of the EHS is to provide the requisite infrastructure and resources that enable global exchange of technical information related to interdisciplinary energy harvesting research, standards and policy. In fulfilling this role, EHS will organize the first annual energy harvesting along with IWPMA 2017 and 12th EHW. Further information about these joint conferences can be found at www.ehworkshop.com. All the invited papers from this workshop will have option of publishing in the journal Energy Harvesting and Systems.