ACADEMIA

Two of Univa’s founders, Dr. Ian Foster and Dr. Carl Kesselman, have been named, by Nature Magazine, among the top 100 computer scientists worldwide for 2007, based on a formula that measures the impact of scientists’ work. Known as the fathers of grid computing, Foster and Kesselman along with Steve Tuecke founded Univa in 2004. Foster was recognized by Nature as one of the world’s three most influential computer scientists based on the many papers he has authored and the citations those works have earned from other scientists. Long time collaborators, Kesselman and Foster have received numerous previous awards, including the Lovelace Medal of the British Computer Society for significant contributions to information technology, the R&D top 100 award from R&D magazine, and were named by MIT Technology Review as creators of one of the top 10 technologies that will change the world. “Any company would be proud to have a single member of its team on such a prestigious list,” said Jason Liu, Univa’s president and chief executive officer. “But to have two listed by Nature speaks to the incredible level of expertise our company brings to the field of grid and cluster computing.” Foster is an active member on Univa’s board of directors and the company’s chief open source strategist, and Kesselman is both a member of the board of directors and the company’s chief scientist. Besides his role at Univa, Foster is associate division director for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory’s Mathematics and Computer Science Division. He also is the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Computer Science at The University of Chicago. His recognitions include an honorary Doctorate from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and the Gordon Bell Prize for high-performance supercomputing. He currently works as the director of the Computation Institute, a joint project between Argonne and The University of Chicago charged with tackling the most difficult computational and communications problems that hinder scientists in many different disciplines. Kesselman is the director of the Center for Grid Technologies at the Information Sciences Institute and a research professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California. Named an ISI Fellow in 2003, Kesselman’s other recognitions include an honorary Doctorate from the University of Amsterdam and most recently the Horizon Award by ComputerWorld magazine.