Keith Ross

Keith Ross is a Professor of Computer Science at NYU Abu Dhabi. He also holds affiliated appointments with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at NYU Tandon, with the Department of Computer Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU, with the Center for Data Science at NYU, and with NYU Shanghai.  

He joined NYU Abu Dhabi in September 2023. Previously he was the Dean of Computer Science, Data Science, and Engineering at NYU Shanghai (10 years) and the Leonard J. Shustek Professor at NYU Tandon (10 years). Before that he was a professor at University of Pennsylvania (13 years) and a professor at Eurecom Institute (5 years). He received  a Ph.D. in Computer and Control Engineering from The University of Michigan. 

His current research interests are in AI, specifically reinforcement learning and deep learning.  He has also worked in Internet privacy, peer-to-peer networking, Internet measurement, stochastic modeling of computer networks, queuing theory,  and Markov decision processes. For the past several years he has been teaching cources on Machine Learning  and on Reinforcement Learning.

He is an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow. He is also 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. 

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, eighth edition 2020). 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. A personal account of asynchronous voice and the early days of Wimba can be found here.

Professor Ross is fluent in French and proficient in Mandarin.