Reporter Volume 25, No.15 February 3, 1994

media study

CITED FOR EXCELLENCE:
Gerald O'Grady, associate professor of media study, has received the
Joan Clark Award for Excellence in Media from the New York State
Library Association, during the group's annual meeting in Niagara
Falls.
	O'Grady, who received the award from William Sloan, director
of the film and video circulating library at New York's Museum of
Modern Art, was honored for contributions over a 21-year period. He
was keynote speaker at New York's Donnell Public Library Conference on
building film programs in libraries, and subsequently supervised a
special issue of Film Library Quarterly on that subject. 	He was
also cited for his commitment to film and video distribution
throughout Western New York, and for contributing to library
collections through his production of independent documentary films
for public television. Currently, he is helping to preserve and
distribute films of the civil rights movement and the first 25 years
of independent video production in the U.S.

MEDICINE
ELECTED TO PEDIATRIC SOCIETY:
Michael Msall, UB associate professor of pediatrics and rehabilitation
medicine, has been elected to membership in the Society for Pediatric
Research, a national organization for accomplished academic
pediatricians.
	Membership is based on research record, sponsorship by members
in oneUs specialty area and a vote by the full membership. 
	MsallUs research has focused on the problems and consequences
of extreme prematurity and functional independence in children with
DownUs syndrome, cerebral palsy and neurodevelopmental disabilities.
	His work was published recently in Clinical Pediatrics and
will appear in the February issue of the Journal of Perinatology. He
was been invited to present his research on functional independence at
The Johns Hopkins medical institutions in March.
	A member of the UB faculty since 1987, Msall also is chief of
developmental pediatrics and rehabilitation medicine at ChildrenUs
Hospital of Buffalo and the Robert Warner Rehabilitation Center.

CHEMISTRY
NAMED AAAS FELLOW:
Philip Coppens, distinguished professor of chemistry at UB, has been
named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS), the world's largest federation of scientists. Fellows
are those members of the AAAS who have made significant contributions
toward advancing science.
	Coppens has done pioneering work using X-ray diffraction
techniques to study the nature of bonding between atoms in molecules
and crystals. He has used complex mathematical techniques to develop
an X-ray method of "seeing" the electron clouds that surround atoms
and hold them together to form molecules. His methods are now
considered to be classic standards for such analysis and are being
applied in laboratories across the world.
	A UB faculty member since 1968, Coppens recently was elected
president of the International Union of Crystallography. He also is
principal investigator for the State University of New York beamline
at the National Synchrotron Light Source, located at Brookhaven
National Laboratory on Long Island.
	In 1989, Coppens' research team was the first to determine the
nature of small atomic distortions in certain types of
high-temperature superconducting crystals, which affect the
temperature at which the materials become superconducting.
	Recently, he and his postdoctoral research associates
completed the first diffraction study ever done of a molecule in an
electronically excited state. Such experiments give novel information
about the way molecules behave in chemical reactions.
	Coppens is the principal author of "Synchrotron Radiation
Crystallography," published last year by London: Academic Press, one
of the first books describing the use of highly intense X-ray beams
from a synchrotron source in crystallographic experiments.
	He has served as president and vice president of the American
Crystallographic Association, and served several terms as a member of
the U.S. National Committee for Crystallography of the National
Academy of Sciences. A corresponding member of the Royal Dutch Academy
of Sciences, he has authored or co-authored 200 technical papers and
articles.