We're Smarter than we Think: Accelerating Discovery by Outsourcing the Mundane
Ian T. Foster
Senior Scientist, Math and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory
Director, Computation Institute at University of Chicago
Professor, Department of Computer Science Professor, University of Chicago
Distinguished Fellow, Argonne National Laboratory
Hermann Hall West Ballroom
Wednesday, May 4th, 2011
12:00PM - 1:00PM
Abstract: Whitehead observed that "civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them." I propose that commercial cloud computing can allow us to accelerate dramatically the pace of discovery by removing a range of mundane but time-consuming tasks from our consciousness. I describe the Globus Online system that we are developing to explore these possibilities, and propose milestones for evaluating progress towards smarter science.
Bio: Dr. Ian Foster is Director of the Computation Institute, a joint institute of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory. He is also an Argonne Senior Scientist and Distinguished Fellow, and the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Computer Science at University of Chicago. His research deals with distributed, parallel, and data-intensive computing technologies, and innovative applications of those technologies to scientific problems. He has led the development of methods and software that underpin many large national and international cyberinfrastructures. Dr. Foster is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the British Computer Society. His awards include the British Computer Society's Lovelace Medal, honorary doctorates from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and CINVESTAV, Mexico, and the IEEE Tsutomu Kanai award.
Light refreshments will be served.
