UB Chemistry Professor Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Paras N. Prasad, Ph.D., SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University at Buffalo and director of the university's Photonics Research Laboratory, has been awarded a 1997 Guggenheim Fellowship Award.

He is one of 164 artists, scholars and scientists selected from among 2,876 applicants.

Guggenheim fellows are appointed on the basis of unusually distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.

The fellowship provides support for Prasad's research on high-density, three-dimensional optical memory, an application of new, photonic materials that Prasad developed last year. The new materials could revolutionize information storage because they are able to store thousands of times more data than conventional compact disks.

In addition to storing digital data, the new storage media are ideal for archiving very large quantities of pictures, photographs and other visual information that cannot be stored efficiently on today's CDs.

Prasad, a UB faculty member since 1974, is an internationally recognized leader in the field of optics and spectroscopy.

He is founder and director of the Photonics Research Laboratory, which has a unique position among the world's photonics laboratories of focusing on both the fundamental science behind photonic materials, as well as on industrial applications.

A resident of Snyder, Prasad also conducts research on nonlinear optical effects in organic polymers and is developing new generations of multifunctional, nanostructured organic hybrids that could lead to the synthesis of "smart" materials.

Prasad is a fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Optical Society of America. He was a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.

The author of more than 300 technical papers, he has co-edited or written seven books.

A native of India, he attended Bihar University, where he won several scholastic awards. He received his doctoral degree in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania.