Ian Foster | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1959-01-01)1 January 1959 (age 66) Wellington, New Zealand |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for |
|
| Awards |
|
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Parlog as a systems programming language (1988) |
| Doctoral advisor | Keith Clark |
| Website | |
Ian Tremere Foster (born 1 January 1959) is a New Zealand-American computer scientist. He is a distinguished fellow, senior scientist, and director of the Data Science and Learning division atArgonne National Laboratory, and a professor in the department of computer science at theUniversity of Chicago.[2][3]
Foster was born inWellington, New Zealand, in 1959. He was educated atWellington College and theUniversity of Canterbury, followed by theDepartment of Computing,Imperial College London.
From 2006 to 2016, he was director of the Computation Institute (CI), a joint project between theUniversity of Chicago, andArgonne National Laboratory.[4] CI brings together computational scientists and discipline leaders to work on projects with computation as a key component.
He is currently Director of the Data Science and Learning Division atArgonne National Laboratory, a unit established to tackle advanced scientific problems where data analysis and artificial intelligence can provide critical insights and accelerate discovery.
Foster's honours include theGordon Bell Prize for high-performance computing (2001),[5] theLovelace Medal of theBritish Computer Society (2002),[6] an honoraryDoctor of Science from the University of Canterbury in 2005,[7] the IEEETsutomu Kanai Award (2011),[8] the IEEE Computer SocietyCharles Babbage Award,[9] (withCarl Kesselman) the IEEE Computer Society Harry H Goode Memorial Award (2020),[10] theIEEE Internet Award (2023),[a][11] and the ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award (2022).[12] He was elected Fellow of theBritish Computer Society in 2001,Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003,[13] and in 2009, a Fellow of theAssociation for Computing Machinery,[14] who named him the inaugural recipient of the high-performance parallel and distributed computing (HPDC) achievement award in 2012.[15][16] In 2017, he was recognised with the Euro-Par Achievement Award.[17]
Foster's research focuses on the acceleration of discovery in a network usingdistributed computing. WithCarl Kesselman and Steve Tuecke, Foster coined the termgrid computing: techniques for data-intensive, multi-institution collaboration that paved the way forcloud computing. Methods and software developed under his leadership advanced discovery in areas as high energy physics, environmental science, and biomedicine.
For example, grid computing was credited byCERN directorRolf-Dieter Heuer as one of the elements essential for the 2012 discovery of theHiggs boson.[18]
His research has also resulted in the development of techniques, tools andalgorithms for high-performancedistributed computing andparallel computing. His Globus Toolkit project encouraged collaborative computing for engineering, business and other fields. In March 2004, Foster co-foundedUniva Corporation to commercialize the technology.[19]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
