University of Chicago Professor Ian Foster will be awarded the 2002 Lovelace Medal by the British Computer Society this May for his work on grid computing with the Globus project.

Foster, a professor in the Computer Science department and associate director of Argonne National Laboratory’s Mathematics and Computer Science Division, will receive the medal in London with his collaborator on the project, Carl Kesseman of the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute.

The Globus Project is a research and software development venture that delivers the research advances and open-source software required to make grid computing successful in its science, engineering, and business applications.

The September 16 Internet edition of Newsweek referred to Foster and Kesselman as “two of the founding fathers of the grid,” and R&D magazine recently named the Globus Toolkit developed by the Globus Project the “most promising new technology” developed this year.

The Lovelace Medal is presented to individuals who have made significant contributions in the advancement of information system or whose work has meaningfully improved the understanding of the development of information systems. Previous Lovelace Medal recipients include Doug Engelbart, developer of the computer mouse and computer windows, and Linus Torvalds, developer of the Linux operating system. established in 1997, the medal was named after Lady Lovelace, nee Ada Byron, daughter of the poet Lord Byron. Lovelace was educated as a mathematician and scientist and collaborated with Charles Babbage on the development of mechanical computers during the first half of the 19th century.