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 News
Colloquia
Why Computer Science is Fundamental to Everything
Ian Foster
Argonne National Laboratory & University of Chicago
Thursday, April 19, 2007
A growing fraction of human knowledge, in fields as diverse as climate
and genomics, would not exist in its current form if it were not for
computers. The reason is not simply the computer's power as a calculator:
it is also because science is increasingly about information:
its collection, organization and transformation. And if we view computer
science as the systematic study of algorithmic processes that describe
and transform information, then computing underpins knowledge in a
fundamental way. One can argue, as has George Djorgovski, that
"applied computer science is now playing the role that mathematics
did from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries: providing an
orderly, formal framework and exploratory apparatus for other sciences."
This expansive view of computer science is empowering for us computer
scientists; it also poses hard questions about what problems we should
work on, how we should engage with other disciplines, and the sociology
of collaboration.
Bio: Ian Foster is Director of the Computation Institute at Argonne
National Laboratory and the University of Chicago, where he is also
the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Computer
Science. His research deals with distributed, parallel, and
data-intensive computing technologies; the applications of those
technologies to scientific problems; and the mechanisms and policies
needed to create and operate scalable scientific "cyberinfrastructures,"
or Grids as he likes to call them. Dr. Foster is a fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science and the British Computer
Society. His awards include the British Computer Society's award for
technical innovation, the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) Next
Generation award, the British Computer Society's Lovelace Medal, R&D
Magazine's Innovator of the Year, and DSc Honoris Causa from the
University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Hosted by: Carlos Varela (x6912)
Administrative support: Shannon Carrothers (x6354)
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