Keith Ross

Keith Ross is the Dean of Engineering and Computer Science at NYU Shanghai and the Leonard J. Shustek Chair Professor of Computer Science at NYU Tandon. He also holds an affiliated appointment with the Department of Computer Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and with the Center for Data Science at NYU.

He is an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow. He is the recipient of several prestigious best paper awards and his work has been featured in the mainstream press, including New York Times, NPR, Bloomberg Television, Huffington Post, Fast Company, Ars Technia, and the New Scientist. 

Previously he was a professor at University of Pennsylvania (13 years) and a professor at Eurecom Institute (5 years). He was the Department Head of the CSE Department at NYU from 2008 to 2013, and he joined NYU Shanghai in 2013. He received a Ph.D. in Computer and Control Engineering from The University of Michigan.

His current research interests are in reinforcement learning and data-driven analysis of online social networks. He has also worked on peer-to-peer networking, Internet measurement, stochastic modeling of computer networks, queuing theory, and Markov decision processes.

He is co-author (with James F. Kurose) of the popular textbook, Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet, published by Pearson (first edition in 2000, seventh edition 2016). It is the most popular textbook on computer networking, both nationally and internationally, and has been translated into fourteen languages. Professor Ross is also the author of the research monograph, Multiservice Loss Models for Broadband Communication Networks, published by Springer in 1995.

In 1999, he co-founded and led Wimba, which develops voice and video applications for online learning. He was the Wimba CEO and CTO from 1999 to 2001. Wimba was acquired by Blackboard in 2010.