James Ian Munro (born July 10, 1947) is a Canadian computer scientist. He is known for his fundamental contributions to algorithms and data structures (including optimal binary search trees, priority queues, hashing, and space-efficient data structures).

After earning a bachelor's degree in 1968 from the University of New Brunswick and a master's in 1969 from the University of British Columbia, Munro finished his doctorate in 1971 from the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Allan Borodin. In Munro & Suwanda (1980), he formalized the notion of an implicit data structure, and has continued work in this area. He is currently a University Professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo and the Canada Research Chair in Algorithm Design (Tier I), a research title that was first given in 2001 and was renewed most recently in 2016.

Awards and honours

Munro was elected as a member of the Royal Society of Canada in 2003. He became an ACM Fellow in 2008 for his contributions to algorithms and data structures.

In 2013 a conference was held at Waterloo in his honor, and a festschrift was published as its proceedings.

Partial bibliography