I would like to begin my inaugural editorial by saying how honored and happy I am on being appointed Editor-in-Chief of this prestigious journal. In addition, it is my greatest pleasure to thank Dr. David K. Campbell for his outstanding work in founding and forming Chaos and acting so successfully as Editor-in-Chief for 25 years. He has set and maintained the highest scientific standards combined with good scientific practice in leading and managing the editorial process which has made Chaos the most distinguished journal in nonlinear science.

Although nonlinear science was initiated in 1665 by Christiaan Huygens when he discovered synchronization, it grew tremendously in the 1980s after making the new paradigms of chaos and fractals popular. This led in the late 1980s and early 1990s to the euphoric hope that the simplest nonlinear model systems generating chaotic dynamics and/or fractal structures could be sufficient to describe even complicated natural systems, such as cardiovascular dynamics, the human brain, or climate. But it was later verified that this was too naïve; such modeling is too sparse and leads to an oversimplification. Consequently, one main focus of Chaos was to propose and develop productive and scientifically sound ways to study such natural processes by means of simple (but not too simple) nonlinear models, i.e., to overcome such excessive expectations. Outstanding examples for the success of this intention are interdisciplinary focus issues in Chaos, such as Dynamical Diseases (1995), and several others, knitting together nonlinear dynamics with neuroscience, systems biology, chemistry, Earth systems, etc.

My vision for Chaos is that it remains the leading journal in nonlinear science and continues to attract authors and readers from all continents and all fields related to nonlinear and complex systems. To achieve this, I want to strengthen its distinctive and highly successful approaches. Nonlinear science is clearly an interdisciplinary science which substantially benefits from applications in various disciplines: classic areas such as experimental physics, fluid dynamics, chemistry, and electrical engineering, as well as emerging areas like systems biology. A productive and well-balanced combination of theory and application is a key for the success of Chaos. I plan to promote further quickly evolving interdisciplinary areas, in particular, complex systems in nature, engineering, and society where manifold interacting subsystems are substantially different (e.g., climate change and health, interacting organs, or power grids and transport). This also implies methodological challenges as hot topics for Chaos, such as extreme events in complex systems, inferring causality and models from big data, the impact of non-Gaussian noise, and the functioning of evolving multiplex networks. I see close communication with the Editorial Board and the authors and readers of Chaos to identify promising emerging topics as another important part of my activities.

Scientific communication and publishing are undergoing substantial changes which also have a strong impact on a peer-reviewed journal like Chaos. On the one hand, the Journal can take advantage of the potential of new media in scientific articles, such as embedded video and more interactive article formats. On the other hand, Chaos is THE premier publication for scientists interested in nonlinear science. We will intensify the selection process of papers to maintain the highest scientific standards in a transparent peer-review process, to deliver original, pioneering, and well-written contributions on nonlinear science and its applications. To strengthen this pivotal role, I intend to establish a new category of fast track papers for publishing important contributions. Additionally, Chaos supports the publication of articles detailing research with methodological components of widespread importance, especially in time series, bifurcation, and network analysis. Together with the Editorial and Advisory Boards, I will encourage scientists from these fields to publish papers in Chaos describing implementation of their recent methodological achievements.

Young scientists all over the world represent the future of Chaos and we intend to increase their interest in nonlinear science and their participation in the Journal. Chaos will provide them examples for good scientific writing and good scientific practice. Globalization is a chance and a challenge also for nonlinear science. We intend further to attract authors, reviewers, and readers from all over the world to be actively involved in the development of our discipline and will incorporate more editors from Asia and Latin America.