He is Director of the International Music Information Retrieval Systems Evaluation Laboratory (IMIRSEL). Downie was the PI on the Human Use of Music Information Retrieval Systems (HUMIRS) and the Music-to-Knowledge (M2K) music data-mining projects. He has been very active in the establishment of the MIR and Music Digital Library communities through his ongoing work with the ISMIR conferences as a founding member of the ISMIR steering committee. He is the founder and ongoing director of MIREX. He holds a BA (Music Theory and Composition), a MLIS, and a PhD in Library and Information Science, all earned at the University of Western Ontario.