January 11, 2006 —
Computer scientist Carl Kesselman, the co-inventor of open source
grid software now widely used all over the world, received an honorary
doctorate Jan. 9 from the
University of Amsterdam.
The citation salutes his work. "Without doubt, he will enter history as
one of the most important designers of the way in which data is
gathered and processed both in academic experiments and in daily life."
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Carl Kesselman
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Kesselman
is the director of the
Center for Grid Technologies at the USC
Information Sciences Institute and an associate research professor in
the Viterbi School department of computer science. He and his
longtime collaborator Ian Foster of Argonne Laboratory have spent the
last decade developing the
Globus Project. a suite of open source
software for distributed computer systems, freely available for use
(and modification) by programmers.
Globus coordinates the use of geographically distant computers — their
raw computing power, the data they contain, and the instruments
controlled by them. The software addresses the security, data-
management, execution management, resource discovery and other issues
that arise from such sharing.
According to the honorary doctorate citation, this research "caused an
extraordinary breakthrough in the complete infrastructure of
information technology.
"Grid technology enables the construction of computer networks, which
can function as virtual super-computers with great arithmetic
capacities. In a grid, computers or clusters of computers are integrated into a
completely new concept of data processing, which leads to more
transparent access to all kinds of new data and services, and to
special peripheral equipment such as particle accelerators and medical
scanners. ... "
Globus is now part of numerous highly visible projects including the
U.S. TeraGrid national computing infrastructure project and NEESGrid
earthquake engineering system, the international LHC particle physics
grid, and also major efforts in astronomy, genomics, and other fields.
Kesselman was introduced by UvA's Peter Sloot, professor of
Computational Science. In Amsterdam, in addition to receiving his
degree, Kesselman also
taught a masterclass on 'The Grid: Motivation, Applications and
Infrastructure."
