He received bachelor's degrees in engineering and political science, a master's degree in political science, and a PhD in communications from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. From 1975 to the present, he has been a professor at The George Washington University. From 1994 to 1997 he was the faculty facilitator of the Quality and Innovation Initiative in the GW School of Business and Public Management. From 1997 to 2000 he worked on the Year 2000 Computer Crisis, viewing it as an opportunity to test social science theories using a before and after research design.

Umpleby has published articles in Science, Policy Sciences, Population and Environment, Science Communication, The Futurist, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Simulation and Games, Business and Society Review, Telecommunications Policy, Systems Practice, and Cybernetics and Systems. He is a past president of the American Society for Cybernetics. He is Associate Editor of the journal Cybernetics and Systems. 

He has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, the Open Society Fund, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. He has consulted with government agencies in the U.S. and Canada and with corporations in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. 

In connection with his work in systems theory and management, he has been a guest scholar at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, the University of Vienna, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, Austria, and the University of St. Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland. He is a member of the Principia Cybernetica Project at the Free University of Brussels. 

Between 1981 and 1988 Umpleby was the American coordinator of a series of meetings between American and Russian scientists to discuss the foundations of cybernetics and systems theory. These meetings were supported by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the International Research and Exchanges Board of the American Council of Learned Societies. His interest in the transitions in the post-communist countries has resulted in his presenting lectures at various institutes of the Academies of Science of Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria. In 1996 he organized a conference on American and Russian views of US Aid to Russia. 

He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Cybernetics, the Austrian Society for Cybernetic Studies, and the International Society for the Systems Sciences.

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