Volume 5 Issue 1

From the ICDD - You are receiving this newsletter because you are an ICDD Member, have attended an ICDD-sponsored program, or are affiliated with the ICDD. If you do not wish to receive this e-newsletter, unsubscribe here. 

See this newsletter on the ICDD web site.

A number of changes have taken place at the International Centre for Diffraction Data upon the retirements of Editor-in-Chief, Frank McClune and Principal Scientist, John Faber. New editors and scientists have been hired, and both Frank and John continue to provide help and support to the ICDD and the membership as consultants. Frank continues to be involved as an editorial consultant working with ICDD grantees and John is coordinating global educational opportunities as chairman of XRD clinics and symposia.

The ICDD is very pleased to announce the following changes and additions.

STAFF PROMOTIONS - Congratulations!!

Dr. Soorya N. Kabekkodu

Editor-in-Chief
The ICDD is pleased to announce Dr. Soorya N. Kabekkodu (Suri) as our new Editor-in-Chief of the Powder Diffraction File! Suri received his doctoral degree from the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit of the prestigious Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India.

Dr. Kabekkodu began his tenure at the ICDD in 1999 as a Post Doctoral Research Fellow. At the end of his post doc, Suri readily accepted the position of Editor of Calculated Patterns. During the last 8 years, Suri has spearheaded the editorial task of adding more than 500,000 calculated powder patterns and more than 100,000 crystal structures from collaborating databases. Suri chaired the task group to develop the methodology for evaluating calculated patterns based on their crystal structure and implemented the Calculated Pattern Quality Mark system. He developed many analytical and diagnostic programs that help to evaluate, organize and categorize the data. This has had an enormous benefit on recognizing pattern quality and has also enhanced our ability to recognize and remove duplicate entries.

Mr. Justin Blanton

Senior Software Engineer
Justin Blanton was recently promoted to Senior Software Engineer. As a student of West Chester University, Justin began his employment at ICDD as a summer intern in 2001. After graduating with a degree in Computer Science in 2002, he joined the staff in a permanent position as Software Engineer. With this promotion, Justin was recognized for his commendable performance by advancing to 'senior' status. Justin has been heavily involved in transitioning the PDF to a Sybase database with a JAVA interface and currently coordinates PDF-4+ Release 2007 product development efforts.

NEW ADDITIONS!

New editors, Mr. Michael Carr (left) and Dr. Joel Reid (right)

Senior Scientific Editor
Joining the ICDD staff in early March as a Scientific Editor, Dr. Joel Reid is our newest employee. He received his B.Sc.E. and Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, working on silicon substituted calcium phosphate biomaterials. Joel's prior work experience includes two and a half years at Millenium Biologix Corporation, also in Kingston, conducting research and development of new biomaterials products, implementing processing improvements for manufacturing and developing new Rietveld QPA procedures for quality control of biomaterial production.

Scientific Editor
In April 2006, Michael Carr was hired as a Scientific Editor of the Powder Diffraction File. Michael received his B.S. degree in Biology from West Chester University. Prior to joining ICDD, he worked in analytical laboratory environments in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries.

The addition of new editors enables the ICDD to accelerate editorial work on Powder Diffraction File databases. Current editorial activities include subfile enhancements, data quality reviews, cross reference additions and assignments, data standardization, and physical property calculations. Their work will provide future users with new and improved database features and capabilities.

International Centre for Diffraction Data
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Phone: +610-325-9814
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