Preface: Celebrating vanadium science with leading bioinorganic contributions from the 9th International Vanadium Symposium.

During the year of 2014, advances in vanadium science were celebrated at the International Vanadium Symposium in Italy in July and at the 248th American Chemical Societymeeting in San Francisco in August. The vanadium symposium entitled “V9, 9th International Vanadium Symposium” was held for the first time in Italy, organized by the Chairwoman of the Vanadium Society Prof. Valeria Conte and Prof. Giulia Licini. The programconsisted of approximately 100 oral and poster abstracts from vanadium scientists. This was the 9th in a series of symposia with a rich history summarized elsewhere [1,2]. These have been held since 1998 around the world with the two immediately preceding symposia being inWashington DC (Summer 2012) and in Toyama, Japan (Fall 2010). The 9th symposium was held at the “Centro Congressi San Gaetano” and the Archivio Antico of Padova University, near the Galileo Chair. The Italian vanadium chemists themselves have a long history of interest in vanadium beginning more than 50 years ago with Prof. Modena’s contributions in organic synthesis using the metal as a catalyst [3–6]. The current volume of Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry compiles a number of contributions from both the vanadium conference and a symposium at the 248th American Chemic Society Meeting to honor Prof. Kenneth Kustin. We are particularly pleased to include in this volume the review by the Vanadis Awardee, Prof. Joao Costa Pessoa and the perspective on solution speciation by Prof. Kenneth Kustin who served the vanadium community for many years through his scientific endeavors and more recently as a chair of the Vanadis award committee. Finally, we are thrilled to include a review of the work by the late Lage Pettersson written by Prof. Rehder. During his lifetime, Prof. Pettersson resisted writing reviews and as such there is no previous compilation of his contributions to speciation of vanadium(V). These three papers represent important contributions in vanadium science documenting how far the field has come and the quality of the investigation that continues in this field. The 2014 Vanadis Award winner Professor Joao Costa Pessoa, from Lisbon, Portugal, has studied vanadium chemistry for more than three decades. He is one of the world’s experts in EPR spectroscopy of vanadium and speciation of this metal. As the Director of “Centro de Química Estrutural (I.S.T.)” at Instituto Superior Técnico Universidade de Lisboa, Prof. Joao Pessoa has contributed to the vanadium science not only through his direct involvement but also by providing a supportive environment for young researchers entering the field. In accepting the award, he described his work over time beginning with solution studies characterizing the interactions of amino acids with the vanadyl cation. Prof. Pessoa also detailed more recent investigation into several controversial areas of vanadium science such as transferrin binding and transport, development