In 1987, he joined the graduate program at Harvard University as a research fellow, earning a Master of Arts in computer science in 1988.
He is frequently called upon to serve as an expert witness in Intellectual Property and Patent litigation involving networking and software systems.
In 2007, he was recognized as the first Computer Science Faculty member to step in and expose the RIAA's technically-bankrupt strategy to intimidate and prosecute undergraduate students accused of illegal file sharing.
[25][26] Earlier in his career, from 1983 to 1987, he worked in Alexandria, Egypt, as a software engineer at Awad Associates and as a data analyst at the Mediterranean Regional Office of the World Health Organization.
[30] As of 2019, his research has received over $40 million in funding from government and industry sponsors, which has yielded 19 PhD theses, 8 issued patents, 2 startups, and hundreds of refereed papers with over 20,000 citations.
Most recently, his research on privacy-preserving analytics has attracted a lot of attention due to its use in the first-of-its-kind study of the gender wage gap,[31][32] and its citation as an enabler of US legislation on "Student Right to Know Before You Go Act"[33][34] as well as "Evidence-Based Policy Making.
He is currently on the editorial board for the Communications of the ACM as a co-editor of its Research Highlights, which publishes the most influential and most read articles in the computer science field.
Bestavros has given numerous speeches and talks at events and institutions all over the world and he is often quoted or featured by press and various news media outlet.