Hovav Shacham’s research interests are in applied cryptography, systems security, privacy-enhancing technologies, and technology policy. Shacham was a student at Stanford and a postdoctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute. From 2018 to 2025, he was on the faculty at The University of Texas at Austin. His work has been recognized with four “test-of-time” awards, including one at ACM CCS 2017 for his 2007 paper that introduced return-oriented programming. Shacham took part in California’s 2007 “Top-to-Bottom” voting systems review and served on the advisory committee for California’s 2011–13 post-election risk-limiting audit pilot program. His work has been cited by the National Academies, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the RAND Corporation.