Professor Nate Foster has been appointed the interim associate dean for research for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. Foster will fulfill this role while Professor Thorsten Joachims is on sabbatical for the 2022-2023 academic year.
“In addition to being an exceptional researcher, Nate has broad experience with various government research agencies and engagement with startups and industry consortia,” said Kavita Bala, dean of Cornell Bowers CIS. “I am confident the college will maintain its positive momentum under his leadership.”
In this role, Foster will coordinate new research initiatives, collaborate with the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Innovation (OVPRI), and expand the college’s engagement and research leadership at the university level — including with colleges across Cornell’s campuses and with external partners and funders.
“I'm excited to help build out college-level support for research, continuing the excellent work by Thorsten and others,” Foster said. “Bowers CIS has a extraordinary set of faculty, staff, and students who are doing truly amazing research across all of computing and information science. I'm looking forward to supporting them as they work to make new discoveries and translate their ideas into practice.”
Foster received his Ph.D. in computer and information science from the University of Pennsylvania, after which he was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University. He joined the Cornell community in 2010. Working with his students and collaborators, Foster has received several awards, including the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the SIGCOMM Rising Star Award, the inaugural Ann S. Bowers ’59 Research Excellence Award, POPL’s Distinguished Paper Award in 2020, and ICFP’s most Influential Paper Award in 2021, among others. He is a member of DARPA's Information Science and Technology (ISAT) group, which studies emerging technology trends, and is chief architect for the open-source P4 Language Consortium.
Foster will continue to teach and conduct research in programming languages, networking, and security.