HPCwire's List of 35 HPC Legends
August 26, 2024 | HPCwire
In celebration of HPCwire’s 35th anniversary, HPCwire announced the inaugural list of HPCwire 35 Legends — an annual list recognizing 35 luminaries who have made HPC what it is today.
Dr. Ian Foster, has been called the “father of the grid.” Credited for coining the term grid computing (with Carl Kesselman and Steve Tuecke), Foster foresaw a world in which computing is delivered on demand as a service, and virtual organizations link scientists and resources worldwide. These grid computing techniques for data-intensive, multi-institution collaboration have enabled building the protocols that have established today’s ubiquitous cloud computing.
Foster is Director of the Data Science and Learning Division at Argonne National Laboratory where he leads collaborative efforts in distributed systems, HPC, and applied AI for scientific discovery. His team’s current focus includes efforts in autonomous discovery, particularly self-driving labs, and AuroraGPT, a project using the Aurora supercomputer to build and train LLMs for scientific use.
“I have always been fascinated by the question of how computers can augment (not replace) human intelligence—a concept that dates back at least to Doug Engelbart and JCR Licklider,” Foster told HPCwire, noting that this interest motivated his PhD work on automated logical inference. A quest for faster inference led Foster to Argonne’s Advanced Computing Research Facility and its early parallel computers, and the University of Chicago, institutions where he has pursued research for 35 years.
Foster is a Professor of Computer Science at UChicago where he co-leads Globus Labs, a not-for-profit research cyberinfrastructure that is the epitome of his work towards a global authentication, data, and computing fabric. Foster oversees the operation and development of Globus, as well as leads students, postdocs, and staff working in distributed systems, data, HPC, AI, and related topics. “My environment has also allowed me to pursue many other interests, from parallel climate models to AI-based material design, knowledge diffusion in science, and the impact of nuclear war on food production,” said Foster.
Foster considers Globus among his most significant contributions to HPC, as it boasts 500K registered users in over 100 countries and is increasingly being used to build data-driven applications processing data in real time from scientific instruments, deliver specialized data products to remote researchers, and code the computing continuum.
“Globus can be viewed as simple ‘plumbing,’” Foster says, “But to my mind, it is an excellent example of how by raising the level of abstraction at which people work, one can enable new thinking and accelerate discovery broadly.”
Foster has received many awards, including the British Computer Society’s Lovelace Medal, HPDC Achievement Award, IEEE Charles Babbage Award, and ACM/IEEE Ken Kennedy Award.
Foster says embodying a “beginner’s mind” and a love of collaboration is fundamental to his projects: “I know that whatever problem I am interested in, there are others who know more about it than I do. But as long as one is willing to engage enthusiastically, ask questions, and look stupid sometimes, success often seems to follow.”