Ian Foster

About

Ian Foster is an Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the development and application of computer science principles, particularly in the areas of scientific computing, data science, and high-performance computing. Foster's work involves exploring innovative computational paradigms and advancing the foundations of data-driven scientific discovery. He is recognized for his contributions to the field of computer science, especially in the context of scientific research and data-intensive applications. Foster's leadership and research have significantly impacted how complex scientific computations are performed and how data is managed and analyzed in interdisciplinary settings, fostering collaboration across academia, industry, and government sectors.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Biology
• Data science
• Engineering
• Economics
• Data Mining
• Machine Learning
• Ecology

Selected publications

• Climate impacts on global agriculture emerge earlier in new generation of climate and crop models

  Nature Food · 2021 · 910 citations

  DOI

• Autonomous experimentation systems for materials development: A community perspective

  Matter · 2021 · 344 citations

  DOI

• A regional nuclear conflict would compromise global food security

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 149 citations

  A limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan could ignite fires large enough to emit more than 5 Tg of soot into the stratosphere. Climate model simulations have shown severe resulting climate perturbations with declines in global mean temperature by 1.8 °C and precipitation by 8%, for at least 5 y. Here we evaluate impacts for the global food system. Six harmonized state-of-the-art crop models show that global caloric production from maize, wheat, rice, and soybean falls by 13 (±1)%, 11 (±8…

  DOI

• High-Throughput Virtual Screening and Validation of a SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease Noncovalent Inhibitor

  Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling · 2021 · 110 citations

  Despite the recent availability of vaccines against the acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the search for inhibitory therapeutic agents has assumed importance especially in the context of emerging new viral variants. In this paper, we describe the discovery of a novel noncovalent small-molecule inhibitor, MCULE-5948770040, that binds to and inhibits the SARS-Cov-2 main protease (M^pro) by employing a scalable high-throughput virtual screening (HTVS) framework and a…

  DOI

• FAIR for AI: An interdisciplinary and international community building perspective

  Scientific Data · 2023 · 81 citations

  A foundational set of findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) principles were proposed in 2016 as prerequisites for proper data management and stewardship, with the goal of enabling the reusability of scholarly data. The principles were also meant to apply to other digital assets, at a high level, and over time, the FAIR guiding principles have been re-interpreted or extended to include the software, tools, algorithms, and workflows that produce data. FAIR principles are now bei…

  DOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: SI2-SSI: SciDaaS - Data Management as a Service

  NSF · $2.8M · 2012–2018

• NIH Grant R01LM010132

  NIH · $1.2M · 2012

• Frameworks: Garden: A FAIR Framework for Publishing and Applying AI Models for Translational Research in Science, Engineering, Education, and Industry

  NSF · $3.5M · 2022–2027

Frequent coauthors

• Kyle Chard

  University of Chicago

  544 shared

• Ben Blaiszik

  Argonne National Laboratory

  265 shared

• Carl Kesselman

  University of Southern California

  188 shared

• Ryan Chard

  174 shared

• Steven Tuecke

  University of Chicago

  171 shared

• Rajkumar Kettimuthu

  University of Chicago

  167 shared

• Ravi Madduri

  Argonne National Laboratory

  165 shared

• Logan Ward

  Argonne National Laboratory

  151 shared

Labs

• Research Labs & GroupsPI

Education

• B.S., Computer Science

  University of Canterbury

• Ph.D., Computer Science

  Imperial College

Awards & honors

• 2024 HPCWired 35 Legends List
• 2023 IEEE internet award
• 2022 ACM/IEEE Ken Kennedy award
• 2020 DOE office of science distinguished scientists fellow
• 2019 IEEE-CS Charles Babbage award

Similar researchers at University of Chicago

• Michael Franklinh-97
• David Cashh-75
• Nick Feamsterh-74