He is a former Professor of Computer Science at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.
Downey received in 1989 his BS and in 1990 his MA, both in civil engineering, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his PhD in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1997.
He started his career as research fellow in the San Diego Supercomputer Center in 1995.
He was research fellow at Boston University in 2002 and professor of computer science at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering since 2003.
In 2009-2010 he was also visiting scientist at Google Inc.[1] Downey has published the following textbooks,[1] which are also freely available online from Green Tea Press under the GNU Free Documentation License:[2][3]