Çetin Kaya Koç received his Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from University of California Santa Barbara in 1988. His research interests are in electronic voting, cyber-physical security, cryptographic engineering, finite field arithmetic, random number generators, and neuromorphic engineering.

Koç is the co-founder of the Conference on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems. The CHES Conference is the second largest cryptography conference and the premier forum for presenting scientific advances in all aspects of cryptographic hardware and security of embedded systems. Koç is also co-founder of two other conferences: International Workshop on the Arithmetic of Finite Fields (WAIFI) and Security Proofs for Embedded Systems (PROOFS). WAIFI is a forum of engineers and mathematicians interested in efficient software and hardware realizations of finite fields. On the other hand, the goal of the PROOFS workshop is to promote methodologies that increase the confidence level in the security of embedded systems, especially those that contain cryptographic mechanisms.