Jim Kurose received a B.A. degree in physics from Wesleyan University and his Ph.D. degree in computer science from Columbia University. He is currently Distinguished University Professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Professor Kurose has been a Visiting Scientist at IBM Research, INRIA, Institut EURECOM , the University of Paris, the Laboratory for Information, Network and Communication Sciences, and Technicolor Research Labs. He has previously served in a number of campus administrative roles including Chair of the Department of Computer Science, and Interim Dean and Executive Associate Dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

His research interests include computer network architecture and protocols. Jim has served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Communications and was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. He has been active in the program committees for IEEE Infocom, ACM SIGCOMM, ACM SIGMETRICS, and the ACM Internet Measurement conferences for a number of years, and has served as Technical Program Co-Chair for these conferences. He is the recipient of several conference best paper awards, the IEEE Infocom Achievement Award, the ACM SIGCOMM award, and the ACM Sigcomm Test of Time Award. He has also received the IEEE Taylor Booth Education Medal and teaching awards from the National Technological University, the UMass College of Natural Science and Mathematics, and the Northeast Association of Graduate Schools. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the IEEE and the ACM.

Jim was one of the founders of the Commonwealth Information Technology Initiative (CITI) and helped lead in founding the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center. He served for seven years on the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association, and on the advisory council of the NSF Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate. He served on the scientific advisory boards of IMDEA Networks in Madrid and the Laboratory for Information, Network and Communication Sciences in Paris. With Keith Ross, he is the co-author of the textbook, Computer Networking, a top down approach (8th edition) published by Pearson.

From January 2015 to September 2019, Jim was on leave from UMass, serving as Assistant Director at the US National Science Foundation, where he led the Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). With an annual budget of nearly $1B, CISE's mission is to uphold the nation's leadership in scientific discovery and engineering innovation through its support of fundamental research in computer and information science and engineering and transformative advances in cyberinfrastructure. Here is a blogpost on his NSF work. While at NSF, he also served as co-chair of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Subcommittee (NITRD) of the National Science and Technology Council Committee on Technology, facilitating the coordination of networking and information technology research and development efforts across Federal agencies. In 2018, Jim also served as the Assistant Director for Artificial Intelligence in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).