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Professor John W. Byers joined the BU Department of Computer Science in 1999. His research interests center on data-analytic and algorithmic challenges in two disciplines: the science of computer networking (e.g., transport protocols, network architecture) and the empirical study of Internet platforms (such as Airbnb, Groupon, and Yelp). His work strikes a balance between theoretical foundations and rigorous data-driven experimentation.
John is Founding Chief Scientist and a member of the Board of Directors at Cogo Labs, a start-up based in Cambridge, MA, where he has had an executive role since the company’s founding (as Adverplex, Inc.) in 2005. Cogo leverages a proprietary technology platform for online advertising, algorithmic marketing, and data science analytics to power their incubated portfolio companies from inception to profitability and beyond.
Selected Publications
Georgios Zervas, Davide Proserpio and John W. Byers. The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Estimating the Impact of Airbnb on the Hotel Industry. To appear in the Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), 2017
John W. Byers, Michael Mitzenmacher and Georgios Zervas. The Groupon Effect on Yelp Ratings: A Root Cause Analysis. In Proc. of the 13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, Valencia, Spain, June 2012.
Dongsu Han, Ashok Anand, Fahad Dogar, Boyan Li, Hyeontaek Lim, Michel Machado, Arvind Mukundan, Wenfei Wu, Aditya Akella, David Andersen, John Byers, Srinivasan Seshan and Peter Steenkiste. XIA: Efficient Support for Evolvable Internetworking. In Proc. of the 9th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI ’12), San Jose, CA, April 2012.