Krishna Foster facts for kids

Krishna Lynne Foster, born on January 7, 1970, is an American environmental chemist. She teaches at California State University, Los Angeles. Her work focuses on how sunlight affects pollution in our environment. Dr. Foster also works hard to encourage more students of color to study chemistry.

Early Life and Education

Krishna Foster was born in Culver City, California. Her parents, Warren and Frances Foster, worked at IBM and San Diego State University. She often says her parents always encouraged her to work hard.

As a teenager, she attended Helix High School. Dr. Foster enjoyed baking when she was young. She liked it because baking involves a lot of chemistry! While still in high school, she received a special award from NASA. This award was for women interested in science.

Dr. Foster then went to Spelman College, graduating in 1992. At Spelman, she took classes in environmental chemistry. This made her decide that she wanted to study this field more deeply. She then moved to the University of Colorado Boulder for her advanced studies. There, she focused on chemicals called hydrogen halides.

In 1998, she returned to California. She joined the University of California, Irvine as a postdoctoral researcher. She worked with another scientist, Barbara J. Finlayson-Pitts. During this time, she used a special tool called mass spectrometry. This tool helped her study tiny sea salt particles.

Research and Career

In 2000, Dr. Foster became a professor at California State University, Los Angeles. That same year, she joined a project called Alert 2000. This was an international program. It studied how sunlight affects snow in Alert, Nunavut, a very cold place. Her research aimed to measure certain gases in the air.

Dr. Foster chose to work at Cal State LA because it values teaching. She believes teaching is as important as doing research. At Cal State LA, she studies how sunlight affects pollutants. She mainly looks at how this happens where air and water meet.

In 2006, she earned tenure, which means she has a permanent teaching position. In 2007, she received the Distinguished Women Award from Cal State LA. Besides her work on pollution, Dr. Foster has also researched how phosphorus might have first become part of living cells.

Helping Students in Science

Dr. Foster is very passionate about making science more open to everyone. She wants more students of color to feel welcome in science and technology. She started a program at Cal State LA called Minorities Opportunities in Research. This program helps students from diverse backgrounds learn about research.

The National Science Foundation has recognized Cal State LA. They named it one of the best places for Latin Americans to study science. Dr. Foster also used the American Chemical Society Project SEED program. This allowed Black chemists to work in her research lab.

For her efforts, she was named a Minority Access National Role Model. She also directs the Minority Biomedical Research Support-Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (MBRS-RISE) program. This program supports students of color. It helps them become research scientists.