EIC Editorial

The landscape of the general area of knowledge and data engineering keeps evolving quickly. We are facing many phenomenal dynamic challenges and opportunities. As the flagship journal in this area, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE) just launched a new initiative of a series of vision and position articles about strategic research and development directions and opportunities written by leaders in related areas. The first article in this series, titled "Federation in Cloud Data Management: Challenges and Opportunities," by G. Chen, H.V. Jagadish, D. Jiang, D. Maier, B.C. Ooi, K-L. Tan, and W-C Tan, is published in this issue. We hope to have about two-three such articles every year. We welcome your comments and suggestions about the possible topics and contributors. The Editor-in-Chief also officially welcomes the 11 associate editors who joined the editorial board in the first half of 2014. This group of newly appointed associate editors represents our interest and determination in recruiting the most established and active working experts in the wonderful wide spectrum of knowledge and data engineering. Moreover, they are very committed and dedicated to serving the community and handling the review processes, as testified by their rich experience. Their professional biographies are included.