Biography

Azer Bestavros is the Inaugural Associate Provost for Computing & Data Sciences and the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Boston University. 

Professor Bestavros was appointed in 2019 to launch the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences (CDS), a university-wide academic unit created to connect BU’s 17 schools and colleges through the common language of computation and to lay the foundation for innovation-driven, civic-minded computing, data science, and AI. As of June 2025, under his leadership, CDS recruited 15 tenure-stream and 8 of-the-practice faculty members and launched 6 new academic programs currently enrolling over 500 undergraduate students, over 160 graduate MS/PhD students, and over 400 online MS students. 

Prior to CDS, Professor Bestavros was the Founding Director of the Hariri Institute for Computing, set up in 2010 to nucleate BU’s presence in computing through pursuit of high-risk, high-reward multidisciplinary research. Under his leadership, the Hariri Institute emerged as a landmark at the crossroads of computational research at BU, engaging over 250 researchers from 38 departments, and securing over $100M in external research funding. Projects that he led at the Institute included the $25M+ Massachusetts Open Cloud, $10M NSF Cloud Security Frontier project, $5M Red Hat Collaboratory for open-source innovation (later renewed for $50M), and the $1M+ SCOPE platform for smart-city cloud applications. Beyond research, the Institute served as an anchor for many university-wide initiatives, including the Data Science Initiative (precursor to CDS), the Digital Learning Initiative (precursor to BU Virtual), the Digital Health Initiative, the AI Research Initiative, the Cyber Security, Law, and Society Alliance, the Software & Application Innovation Lab (SAIL), and the BU Spark! Innovation and Experiential Learning Initiative. 

Professor Bestavros led a number of formative strategic university-wide initiatives. In particular, he led BU's faculty engagement in the 2012 launch of the Massachusetts Green High-Performance Computing Center and the development of its research, education, and outreach, he co-chaired the Council on Educational Technology & Learning Innovation tasked in 2012 with "development of BU's strategy for leveraging on-line technology in residential programs," and he co-chaired the Data Science Task Force charged in 2018 with development of "a vision that further advances BU as a research and education leader in computing and data sciences," which provided the blueprints for the launch of the CDS.

Specializing in networking, distributed systems, and trustworthy computing research, Professor Bestavros made seminal contributions to studies of 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. This technology was instrumental in passage of the 2024 Massachusetts Pay Transparency Law by making it possible for the reporting requirements of the law to be done in a privacy-preserving manner using the software platforms developed by his group at BU. As of 2025, funded by over $54M from government and industry sponsors, his research yielded 20 PhD theses, 8 patents, 2 startups, and hundreds of refereed papers with over 24,500 citations. 

Praised by students for his engaging teaching style and his use of memorable analogies, Professor Bestavros is recognized for his signature CS-350 course, which he developed in the mid 1990s and taught for over 25 years. A nationally-unique course, CS-350 covers fundamental concepts, which underlie the design and implementation of all types of computing systems, and yet are immune to technological churn. He is also credited for many other innovative curricular contributions, most notably his conception of CS-109, a course that introduces non-majors to the "art and science" of quantitative and computational thinking.

Professor Bestavros has a long track record of service to the computing community. Most recently, he served for two terms as a member of the NSF/CISE Advisory Committee; chaired the 2019 and co-chaired the 2014 NSF/CISE Committee of Visitors charged by NSF to evaluate the portfolio and review processes of the CISE Directorate; served on the inaugural advisory board of the Cloud Computing Caucus set up in 2013 to raise public awareness and educate lawmakers on cloud technologies; served for seven years until 2012 as chair of the IEEE Computer Society TC on the Internet; and served for ten years until 2022 on the Editorial Board of Communications of the ACM, having co-edited its  Research Highlights section, which publishes the most influential articles in CS. He is frequently tapped for plenary presentations, federal and local government agency briefings, and media coverage related to contemporary issues at the nexus of computing, society, and public policy.

In recognition of distinguished teaching, research, and service, Professor Bestavros received a number of awards, most notably the ACM Sigmetrics Inaugural Test of Time Award for 1996 work "whose impact is still felt 15 years after its initial publication" and the 2010 United Methodist Scholar Teacher Award for "outstanding dedication and contributions to the learning arts and to the institution." In 2017, he was named a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, the highest distinction bestowed upon senior faculty members at BU for “representing our community with distinction, enriching the academic experience for our students, and raising our stature as a major research university.”

Professor Bestavros held visiting appointments at Harvard University, Institut Eurecom in Sophia Antipolis (France), Deutsche Telekom in Berlin (Germany), Telefonica Research in Barcelona (Spain), KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (Sweden), American University in Cairo (Egypt), and American University in Beirut (Lebanon). He obtained his B.Sc. (1984) and M.Sc. (1987) in Computer Science from Alexandria University, and his A.M. (1988) and PhD (1992) in Computer Science from Harvard University, under Thomas E. Cheatham, one of the "roots" of the academic genealogy of applied computer scientists.

A Coptic Christian native of Alexandria, Egypt, Azer resides in Wayland, Massachusetts, with his wife Kathryn Welter and his three BU Terrier children Mark (CAS’19), John (CAS’23), and Kristen (CDS’25).