Azer Bestavros

Biography

Azer Bestavros, PhD, is a member of the ICSI Board of Trustees. He is the Inaugural Associate Provost for Computing & Data Sciences and William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Boston University. 

Under his leadership, the Boston University Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences has recruited 15 tenure-stream and 8 of-the-practice faculty members and launched 6 new academic programs enrolling over 1,000 students. Before assuming his current position, he was the Founding Director of the Hariri Institute for Computing at Boston University, which was established as a nucleus for high-risk, high-reward multidisciplinary computational research and as an anchor for strategic programs in digital learning, digital health, AI research, cybersecurity, and other areas.

A distinguished educator and scholar, Dr. Bestavros has taught and pursued research in networking, distributed systems, cybersecurity, and high-assurance systems. His seminal contributions include pioneering web push caching through content distribution networks, self-similar Internet traffic characterization, game-theoretic cloud resource management, and safety certification of networked systems and software. His current research is focused on design, implementation, and at-scale deployment of privacy-preserving multiparty computation data systems. Funded by over $54 million from government and industry sponsors, his research has yielded 20 PhD theses, 8 patents, two startups, and hundreds of refereed papers with over 24,000 citations and an H-index of 65 according to Google Scholar.

Dr. Bestavros previously chaired Boston University’s Computer Science Department and has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, Institut Eurécom in France, KTH Royal Institute in Sweden, the American University in Cairo, Deutsche Telekom in Germany, Telefonica Research in Spain, and Microsoft Research in Egypt. He earned his PhD in computer science at Harvard University and his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Alexandria University in Egypt.

Publications

Selected Honors & Awards

• ACM Sigmetrics Inaugural Test of Time Award (2010)
• United Methodist Scholar Teacher Award (2010)

Selected Leadership Activities

• Member of the Governing Board, AI Development Accelerator, BU (since 2025) 
• Associate Provost and Head, Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences, BU (since 2019)
• Founding Director, Hariri Institute for Computing, BU (2010-2019)
• Founding Faculty, Reliable Info Systems & Cyber Security Center, BU (since 2006)
• Chair, Department of Computer Science, BU (2000-2007)
• Member, ADSA Advisory Board (since 2025)
• Member, NSF/CISE Advisory Committee (2020-2025)
• Chair, NSF/CISE Committee of Visitors (2019)
• Member, Editorial Board of Communications of the ACM (2013-2022)

Areas of Expertise

• Operating Systems, Cloud Platforms, and Distributed Computing
• Embedded Systems, IoT Devices, and Cyber-Physical Systems
• Computer Networks, Internet Protocols, and Web Infrastructure
• Cloud Computing, Edge Computing, and Fog Computing
• Distributed Systems and Decentralized Computing
• Privacy-Preserving AI (Differential Privacy, Federated Learning)
• Usable Security and Privacy by Design
• Big Data Analytics, Pipelines, and Infrastructure
• Graph Analytics, Network Science, and Complex Systems
• AI Ethics, Responsible AI, and Governance of Technology