Biographical Sketch
John W. Byers is Professor of
Computer Science and Founding Member of the
Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences
at
Boston University. He currently serves as Executive Director of the
AI Development Accelerator (AIDA) at BU. He previously served a six-year term as Senior Associate Dean of the Faculty
for the Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division of the College of Arts and Sciences at BU.
He was founding Chief Scientist and more recently a member of the Board of Directors at Cogo Labs, a technology incubator
based in Cambridge, MA, where he held an executive role through 2025.
Professor Byers' academic research centers on data-analytic and algorithmic challenges in two disciplines: the
empirical study of Internet platforms and the science of computer networking. His data-driven
research on platforms includes studies of the reputational impacts of running a Groupon offer, the impact of Airbnb
on the hotel industry, and the utility of rating and review sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor.
His research has seen wide media coverage, for example, in the New York Times, The Economist,
in TIME magazine, on NPR, and on Bloomberg TV. His published articles have received
over 17,000 citations, and his research been supported by over $5M in grants from federal agencies
and industrial labs, including an NSF CAREER award.
His computer networking research has been awarded the ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Award
for work on scalable loss-resilient multicast, the IEEE ICDE Best Paper Award and the ICDE Influential Paper
Award for work on networked sensor databases.
He served terms on the editorial board of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking and on the executive committee of
ACM SIGCOMM. He was co-chair of the ACM SIGCOMM 2011 Technical Program Committee and was General co-chair and
TPC co-chair for the ACM Internet Measurement Conference in 2012 and 2016, respectively.
At Cogo Labs, Professor Byers helped research and design the company's proprietary
methods for algorithmic marketing, advertising analytics, and AI tech that powered our incubated portfolio
companies from inception to profitability and beyond.
To date, three Cogo portfolio companies have been acquired,
and one, Everquote, had its IPO in 2018 [NASDAQ: EVER].
Dr. Byers received his B.A. in Computer Science, Economics, and Mathematics at Cornell University (1991), and
his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley (1997).