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Greiner to receive Jaeckle Award from Law School
By CHRISTINE VIDAL
Contributing Editor
President William R. Greiner will receive the Jaeckle Award, the highest honor bestowed by the UB Law School and its Alumni Association, at the 27th Annual Alumni Convocation and 2002 Jaeckle Award Luncheon, to be held at 12:30 p.m. Nov. 2 in the Hyatt Regency Buffalo.
GREINER
The Jaeckle Award is given annually to an individual who has distinguished himself or herself and has made significant contributions to the UB Law School and the legal profession. It is named after its first recipient, the late Edwin F. Jaeckle, a UB alumnus, who for decades was a towering figure in the legal profession and in local, state and national politics. Previous winners have included Charles S. Desmond, Frank G. Jaichle Jr., M. Robert Koren, Matthew J. Jasen, Manly Fleischmann, and M. Dolores Denman.
Nils Olsen, dean of the Law School, will present the award to Greiner at the luncheon, which will follow a morning-long, continuing legal-education program on "Ethics for the Computer Age: Corporate Accountability and Bioinformatics."
Greiner has had a distinguished career at UB spanning 35 years. He joined the UB Law School faculty in 1967, and held several administrative positions in the Law School before being named UB's associate vice president for academic affairs in 1980. He served for seven years as the university's first provost before his appointment as president in 1991.
Under his leadership, UB—a member of the Association of American Universities and New York's most comprehensive public research university-has developed into a leadership institution that substantially benefits the region, state and nation.
"Throughout his illustrious career, Bill Greiner has brought honor to the Law School, to the university and to the legal profession. He is an exceptionally worthy recipient of the Jaeckle Award," said Olsen.
Greiner is credited with helping to expand UB's role as a public research institution by encouraging the growth of more than 80 multidisciplinary research centers that attract millions of dollars in external funding. He has improved the quality of undergraduate education through the University Honors and Distinguished Honors programs; increased the quantity and quality of master's and doctoral programs; overseen the formation of the College of Arts and Sciences, and expanded UB's international programs.
During his tenure as president, new residential housing, a student union and cultural, recreational, commercial and athletic facilities for the North Campus, as well as a new, high-tech academic building on the South Campus, have transformed UB's two campuses. Recently, UB's athletic programs moved to the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I—the nation's highest level of intercollegiate athletic competition. He initiated the $250 million Campaign for UB.
In addition, Greiner has contributed substantially to the quality of life in Western New York.
He has been a key player in working to reconfigure Buffalo's health-care system, as well as a strong leader in efforts to create the Buffalo Center for Excellence in Bioinformatics. Greiner also has worked tirelessly to bridge town/gown and city/county relations, and is widely known as a supporter of regionalism across the Niagara Frontier. Active in numerous regional, state and national organizations, his past and present memberships and affiliations are diverse, reflecting his broad range of interests.
Co-author of "The Nature and Functions of Law," his academic interests include tax and government finance, real property, real estate transactions, municipal law and municipal finance.
The Law School's 27th annual alumni convocation will begin at 8:30 a.m. Participants will earn 3.5 continuing legal education credits for attending.
The first part of the convocation program will focus on business ethics, in particular the responsibilities of corporate officers and directors, and the corresponding obligations of their counsel, including a description of the new S.E.C. rules. Presenters will include Paul Gonson, solicitor of the S.E.C. for 20 years until 1998, who currently is counsel to Kirkpatrick & Lockhart LLP in its Washington, D.C. office, where he specializes in securities matters, and Garry M. Graber, a partner in charge of the bankruptcy and commercial litigation practice group of Hodgson Russ LLP, where he concentrates his practice in the areas of bankruptcy and corporate restructuring, commercial and corporate litigation, and general business law.
The program also will focus on counseling corporate clients about the obligation to preserve and produce evidence, particularly computer/digital data, and the ramifications of destroying evidence. Speakers will be Mark D. Rasch, an independent consultant in cyber law based in Bethesda, Md., where he advises Fortune 500 companies on legal and policy issues relating to doing business in cyberspace, and John M. Curran, a partner in the trial department of Phillips, Lytle, Hitchcock, Blaine & Huber LLP, where he concentrates his practice in the area of commercial, civil and criminal litigation, and appellate practice before state and federal courts.
The second part of the program will be an introduction to bioinformatics, its impact on the local economy and the obligations of counsel to protect clients' intellectual property. Presenters will be Jeffrey Skolnick, a world-renowned scientist in the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics, and director of the Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics.
Also speaking will be Robert J. Genco, UB vice provost and head of the university's Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach (STOR) and SUNY Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Oral Biology in the School of Dental Medicine. STOR will assist businesses and faculty interested in commercializing the intellectual property and scientific products of the Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics.
Shubha Ghosh, UB associate professor of law who is developing the technology and intellectual property concentration for the Law School, also will be a presenter. Ghosh teaches primarily in the area of intellectual property, including the legal regulation of technology through antitrust, patent, copyright and trademark law.