World Scientific has once again expanded its reach with the opening of two new offices in Nankai and California respectively, as part of its mission to spread scientific knowledge to the various corners of the world.

Lying next to a lovely stream, the Nankai office is located at Tianjin's Chern Institute of Mathematics, a center renowned for pure and applied mathematics. The World Scientific staff, led by Rebecca Fu, have been busy setting up the new office. Plans are also underway to augment the team with local staff and to enhance business operations in the marketing and editorial divisions.

Across the Pacific, colleagues in California have also set up a new office right in the heart of Silicon Valley, which is home to Ivy league institutions and firms like Apple and Google. Located at the National University of Singapore's Enterprise Centre, the World Scientific office is headed by Dr Jean Liang, who arrived in California after only three weeks of preparation.

"Here I begin my journey as an acquisitions editor," she says, "with a laptop, a printer and a telephone." Dr Jean had already contacted 1800 local Chinese families to boost the sales of World Scientific's Chinese titles. Additionally, she has secured a consignment agreement with World Journal bookstores in the US to market Chinese titles. She is also in talks with the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) at Berkeley to publish four titles in biochemistry and medicine.

Going forward, Rebecca and Dr Jean Liang will continue to be busy connecting great minds from the East to the West ¨C there will be plenty of conferences to attend, scholars to meet and projects to plan. But there is still a lot more to do as World Scientific continues to pursue new markets and break new ground in the exciting world of scientific publishing.