Murray Turoff life and biography

Murray Turoff is a retired Distinguished Professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) who was a key founding father of computer-mediated communication.

Turoff developed the Emergency Management Information System and Reference Index (EMISARI), the electronic information and communication system that guided the US government's response to emergencies through much of the 1970s and '80s.

The EMISARI network, established in 1971, included what many consider the first instant messaging system, and Turoff was an early theorist of computer-mediated communications and proponent of "computer conferencing" -- a term he may have coined.

Turoff worked on 1960s-era computerized nuclear war games for US defense, and developed the Policy Delphi technique, a modification of the Delphi Method for use in policy analysis and decision-making. Turoff and his wife and frequent collaborator, Dr. Starr Roxanne Hiltz, are both professors at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Turoff co-founded the Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) community.He currently holds the title Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Information Systems Department at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

He has authored or co-authored 8 books including The Network Nation (with his wife Starr Roxanne Hiltz) which won the TSM Award of the Association of American Publishers for the Best Technical Publication in 1978 which went on to become the defining document and standard reference of its time for the field of computer mediated communication.

Author of books:
-The Delphi Method (1975, with Harold A. Linstone)
-The Network Nation (1992, with Roxanne Hiltz)

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