Krishna Foster

Krishna Lynne Foster (born January 7, 1970) is an American environmental chemist who is a professor at California State University, Los Angeles. Her research considers the impact of sunlight on pollutants. Foster has worked to improve the representation of people of colour studying chemistry.

Early life and education Foster was born in Culver City, California. Her parents, Warren and Frances Foster, worked at IBM and San Diego State University. As a student at Spelman, Foster took classes in environmental chemistry, and decided that this was a research area she would like to pursue. She moved to the University of Colorado Boulder for her graduate studies, where she specialised in hydrogen halides. In 1998 she moved back to California, joining University of California, Irvine as a postdoctoral researcher, where she worked alongside Barbara J. Finlayson-Pitts. Here her work made use of mass spectrometry to investigate sea salt particles. There she has studied the impact of sunlight on pollutants, primarily at the air/water interface. She was awarded tenure in 2006 and the California State University, Los Angeles Distinguished Women Award in 2007. She established the Cal State Minorities Opportunities in Research programme, which introduces students from marginalised backgrounds to research methods. The National Science Foundation named Cal State LA as one of the top institutions for Latin Americans. She made use of the American Chemical Society Project SEED initiative to host Black chemists in her research lab. For her efforts, she was named a Minority Access National Role Model. She is the Director of the Minority Biomedical Research Support-Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement) (MBBRS-RISE) programme, which supports students of colour who look to become research scientists.

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