Foreword: Special section on soft electronics

Welcome to this first Special Topics section on Soft Electronics. Beginning with this issue, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPONENTS, PACKAGING AND MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY has initiated a Special Topics section, which will contain between four to eight high-quality papers that comprehensively describe the state of the art and potential future directions for the topics of great interest to our readers. These topics are selected by the EIC in consultation with the other EICs, AEs, and domain experts. Solicitation and peer review of the papers within the Special Topic are directed by a Guest or Associate Editor (GE/AE), who is a leading expert in the area. In the cases where the GE/AE is also an author, the EIC is responsible for the peer review to avoid any real or perceived conflicts of interest.