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Feature Story | Mathematics and Computer Science

Argonne’s Ian Foster Wins Inaugural Industry Leadership Award” from GridWorld

ARGONNE, Ill. (Sept. 12, 2006) – Ian Foster of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory is one of the winners of the first GridWorld Industry Leadership Awards,” presented today at the annual GridWorld conference in Washington, D.C.

Foster, a pioneer in grid computing, is associate division director for Argonne’s Mathematics and Computer Science Division and is also Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Computer Science at The University of Chicago. Foster’s honors include the Lovelace Medal of the British Computer Society and the Gordon Bell Prize for high-performance supercomputing.

In March 2006, Foster was appointed director of the Computation Institute, a joint project between The University of Chicago and Argonne that addresses the most challenging computational and communications problems arising from a broad range of intellectual pursuits. Research at the Computation Institute potentially affects every major scientific discipline that requires intensive computing capabilities, including disease diagnosis, weather forecasting and aircraft design simulation.

He is also Chief Open Source Strategist for Univa Corp., a spin-off company formed to commercialize Argonne research in open source Globus software. Globus technologies are used worldwide in business and science, forming the basis of several dozen national and international collaborative computing projects.

His research is funded by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation to advance the national, economic and energy security of the United States and to promote the progress of science and technological innovation.

Also winning one of the Industry Leadership Awards today is the IBM Corp., honored for its role in integrating Grid software into useable tools.

The awards were conceived in an effort to recognize an individual and an organization for their contributions in building grid awareness by providing technical and business leadership in bringing the technology of Grid and Service-Oriented IT solutions to the market.

I am extremely honored to receive such a significant award and be recognized by my peers in the grid community at large,” Foster said. I look forward to a continued role in furthering the awareness and momentum of grid technology in the commercial market space.”

Sponsors call this a prestigious award, as nominations were solicited from the entire grid community: commercial, academic, scientific and vendors. The winners were chosen from an impressive group of finalists by the GridWorld Advisory Board. GridWorld, produced in collaboration with the Open Grid Forum (OGF) and GlobusWORLD, is a business-to-business conference focused on the commercial benefits of grid computing for Enterprise IT strategists worldwide. GridWorld also brings together the international grid community for in-depth working sessions on user requirements, best practices and interoperable software standards.

Argonne National Laboratory brings the world’s brightest scientists and engineers together to find exciting and creative new solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.