Foster Provost is an American computer scientist, information systems researcher, and Professor of

Data Science Data science is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses statistics, scientific computing, scientific methods, processing, scientific visualization, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge from potentially noisy, stru ...

, Professor of

Information Systems An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems comprise four components: task, people, structu ...

and Ira Rennert Professor of Entrepreneurship at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

Stern School of Business The Leonard N. Stern School of Business (also NYU Stern, Stern School of Business, or simply Stern) is the business schools, business school of New York University, a private university, private research university based in New York City. Founded ...

. He is also the Director for the Data Science and AI Initiative at Stern's Fubon Center for Technology, Business and Innovation. Professor Provost has a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

from

Duquesne University Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit ( ; also known as Duquesne University or Duquesne) is a Private university, private Catholic higher education, Catholic research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded by members of ...

in physics and mathematics and a

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

and Ph.D. in computer science from the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...

. Professor Provost received an honorary doctorate (Doctor Honoris Causa) in Business and Economics from the University of Antwerp in March 2025. Professor Provost is known for his work on evaluating

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

algorithms and AI systems, for his work on applying ROC analysis to AI systems, for his work on social network data analysis, for his work on combining humans and machine learning, and for his work on machine learning for targeted marketing, online advertising, and activity monitoring. He has won awards for his work, including: * The 2020 ACM SIGKDD Test of Time Award *The 2017 European Research Paper of the Year (AIS & CIONET). * The best paper in the journal ''Information Systems Research'' in 2015. * The 2009 INFORMS Design Science award for social network-based marketing, * IBM Faculty Awards for outstanding research in data mining and machine learning, * A President's Award from NYNEX Science and Technology * Best Paper Awards from the ACM SIGKDD conference in 1997, 2008, and 2012, and * Awards in SIGKDD's annual KDDCUP data mining competition. Professor Provost was on the founding teams for five startups, including Dstillery, Integral Ad Science (IAS), Everyscreen Media, Predicube, and Detectica. Professor Provost is coauthor (with Tom Fawcett) of the book, ''Data Science for Business'', which often tops Amazon's best-seller lists in data mining and data modeling. Professor Provost was a Scientific Advisor for the ISI Foundation (which awards the Lagrange Prize), served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal

Machine Learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

for 6+ years. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR) and the journal Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (DMKD/DAMI). He was elected as a founding board member of the International Machine Learning Society.

Sources

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Provost, Foster Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Duquesne University alumni Information systems researchers New York University faculty University of Pittsburgh alumni