Dr. John R. Bourne was previously Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University, where he had been on the faculty since 1969. He also held the position of Professor of Management of Technology between 1991 and 1998.

Dr. Bourne received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1969 from the University of Florida. In 1982 he served as a Visiting Professor at Chalmers University in Goteborg, Sweden, and in 1990 he was a Visiting Researcher at Northern Telecom. He has had varied research interests over the last three decades that include: Quantitative Electroencephalography, Visual Evoked Response Studies, Syntactic Pattern Recognition, Applied Artificial Intelligence, Quantitative Quality Methodologies, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, and paradigms for online learning. Dr. Bourne was Editor-in-Chief of the Begell House Critical Reviews in Biomedical Engineering from 1979 until 2005. He founded the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks and remains as editor. He established the Sloan Foundation supported Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN) Web in 1996 and more recently established activities for the Sloan Consortium, a consortium of over 1200 higher education institutions that have joined together to deliver and promote online learning.

He was the Learning Technology Thrust Leader for the VaNTH (Vanderbilt - Northwestern - Texas - Harvard / MIT) Engineering Research Center from 1999-2000. He is a member of the Forum for the Future of Higher Education and a former member of the Overseer's Committee to Visit Information Technology at Harvard College. At Vanderbilt, he directed the Center for Innovation in Engineering Education and the ALN Center. He is the author of numerous journal publications and book chapters, as well as three books. Dr. Bourne is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers (AIMBE).

Dr. Bourne serves as Professor of Technology Entrepreneurship at Babson College and directs the Sloan Center on Online Education at Olin and Babson Colleges.  He is executive director of the Sloan Consortium.