IUCr 1996 Report - International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD)

ICDD meetings were held at ICDD in Newtown Square, PA, USA, 17-21 March 1997. The financial and product meetings were on Monday and Tuesday. The Technical Committee and its Sub-committees met on Wednesday and Thursday. The Board of Directors had its meetings on Tuesday and Friday. Dr R. L. Snyder is the current Chairman of the ICDD. Highlights of the meetings were technical presentations by E. Antipov (Russia), Shao-Fan Lin (China), J. Fiala (Czech Republic) and R. Allmann (Germany).

The ICDD will be issuing set 47 of the Powder Diffraction File containing 2500 new data sets in August 1997, an increase of 500 data sets compared to previous years. Also in 1997, release J of Crystal Data and a new Electron Diffraction Database will be issued. The ICDD staff are making notable efforts towards making the PDF easier to use on the PC platform. The ICDD completed the first stage of an extensive expansion of the Web page on the Internet (http://www.icdd.com). Considerable information about meetings, products and personnel may be found on this Web page.

ICDD is making an internal effort to expand its membership by contacting many prominent scientists using powder diffraction in their research and suggesting they apply for membership. Over 50 new members were submitted by the Membership Committee for consideration and processing. The prescribed procedure in the By-laws requires this list to be approved by the Board of Directors and the membership. This processing is almost complete.

A new Sub-committee devoted to X-ray fluorescence had its first meeting during the week. Dr M. A. Zaitz chaired the meeting and would like to hear from others interested in becoming active in this Sub-committee (zaitz@vnet.ibm.com).

A new Sub-committee on non-ambient powder diffraction data has been formed. Dr C. Prewitt will Chair this Sub-committee (prewitt@gl.ciw.edu). Its first meeting will be March 1998.

The Grant-in-Aid programme is very active with over 40 projects, mostly outside the US, currently approved. Proposals are now being accepted twice yearly. Proposals for new grants will be up to 31 July 1997 for consideration in the fall. Application information may be obtained by contacting Ms T. Maguire (maguire@icdd.com and on the Web page).

The ICDD awarded four Crystallography Scholarships in 1997. The recipients were: N. Audebrand, University of Rennes, France; D. M. Teter, Carnegie Institution of Washington, USA; S. Savvides, Cornell University, USA; and Hongwu Xu, Princeton University, USA. ICDD also funds two scholarships for high-school students in the Delaware Valley for students who excel in mathematics and science and plan to attend college.

Educational activities of the ICDD continue as short courses associated with meetings such as Denver and EPDIC and the clinics given every June at Newtown Square. Workshops for Grant-in-Aid projects are given in Europe and South America.

The next meeting of the ICDD will be in conjunction with the Denver X-ray Conference, DXC, to be held in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, USA, 4-8 August 1997. Many of the ICDD Sub-committees and the Technical Committee will meet at this conference, and the meetings are all open to any attendees of the conference. Planning for the 1998 DXC has commenced. ICDD has accepted the responsibility for the continued direction of this conference. ICDD has also assisted in the preparation of the DXC proceedings on a CD ROM which contains the 40 volumes of proceedings in page image form and the most recent volumes in searchable form along with a searchable index for the full 40 volumes.

[Next section] [Previous section] [Index] in IUCr annual report for 1996
[1995] [1997] IUCr International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD) report

Copyright © 1997 International Union of Crystallography