Illinois Institute of Technology computer science professor Ioan Raicu and his collaborators have been recognized with the ACM/IEEE SC25 Test of Time Award for their work on a significant data transfer framework. The award will be presented at the ACM/IEEE International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis in St. Louis on November 18.
Raicu co-authored the paper “The Globus GridFTP Framework and Server” in 2005 as a first-year Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago, working under adviser Ian Foster. The paper introduced a method for moving large amounts of data securely by dividing it into pieces and transmitting them through multiple channels simultaneously, rather than sending entire files at once. According to the Test of Time Award committee, this approach provided a foundation for large-scale scientific projects such as telescope sky surveys, particle accelerator analysis, and genomic research.
“The Globus Striped GridFTP paper represents a milestone in data movement for computational science,” said Bill Gropp, chair of the SC25 Test of Time Committee. “Its approach has been widely adopted and remains a critical part of the community’s infrastructure. Few technologies have had such a lasting impact, and this paper represents perfectly what our Test of Time Award is all about.”
GridFTP allowed faster transfer of large data sets from different storage systems and computing platforms than previously available methods. Its open-source design made it reliable and adaptable to various scientific needs.
The Test of Time Award is given to papers submitted to the conference between 10 and 25 years earlier that have had a lasting influence on high-performance computing practices.
Raicu continues his research in high-performance computing at Illinois Tech as head of the DataSys Lab. The lab focuses on developing systems, protocols, and middleware to support large-scale data-intensive applications across diverse platforms including many-core systems, clusters, grids, clouds, and supercomputers.