Ian Foster Named Recipient of 2019 IEEE Computer Society Charles Babbage Award

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., 7 March 2019 — Ian Foster, senior scientist and distinguished fellow, director of the Data Science and Learning Division at Argonne National Laboratory, and the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, has been selected to receive the 2019 IEEE Computer Society (IEEE CS) Charles Babbage Award for his “outstanding contributions in the areas of parallel computing languages, algorithms, and technologies for scalable distributed applications."

The award consists of a $1,000 honorarium, certificate, and an invitation to present a paper at the annual IEEE CS International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2019).  The conference will be held May 20-24, 2019 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Foster’s research deals with distributed, parallel, and data-intensive computing technologies, and innovative applications of those technologies to scientific problems in such domains as materials science, climate change, and biomedicine. His Globus software is widely used in national and international cyberinfrastructures.

Foster is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Association for Computing Machinery, and British Computer Society. His awards include the Global Information Infrastructure Next Generation award, British Computer Society Lovelace Medal, and IEEE Kanai award. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and the Mexican Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute.

He co-founded Univa, Inc., a company established to deliver grid and cloud computing solutions, and Praedictus Climate Solutions, which combines data science and high performance computing for quantitative agricultural forecasting.

Foster received a BSc (Hons I) degree from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and a Ph.D. from Imperial College, United Kingdom, both in computer science.

The new IEEE CS Charles Babbage Award was established in memory of Charles Babbage in recognition of significant contributions in the field of parallel computation. This award covers all aspects of parallel computing including computational aspects, novel applications, parallel algorithms, theory of parallel computation, and parallel computing technologies, among others.

View more information about the Babbage Award, including a list of past recipients.

View more information about the IEEE Computer Society Awards program.

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