In addition, Foley has been given the 2008 Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award, the highest honor Georgia Tech bestows on faculty. Recipients of this award, which comes with a $20,000 prize, are selected by the Faculty Honors Committee for their outstanding commitment to teaching, research and service.

Considered an international leader at the forefront of computing science, Foley was one of the computer graphics pioneers who helped establish Human Computer Interaction (HCI) as a discipline. He is the first author of what many consider the definitive text in computer graphics, Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics, which has reached 400,000 copies in ten translations.

Foley arrived at CoC as Professor of Computer Science in 1991 and founded the GVU Center. Four years later U.S. News and World Report ranked the Center number one for graduate computer science work in graphics and user interaction.

Active in industry, Foley became Director of MERL (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory) in 1996 and then CEO and Chairman of Mitsubishi Electric Information Technology Center America in 1998. He returned to Georgia in late 1999 to head up the state's Yamacraw economic development initiative in design of broadband systems, devices and chips.
For four years (2001-2005), Foley chaired the Computing Research Association (CRA), which represents over 200 research universities, corporate research labs, and professional societies.