Çetin Kaya Koç received a B.S. (summa cum laude) degree in Electrical Engineering from İstanbul Technical University and a Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of California Santa Barbara. His research interests include cryptographic engineering, homomorphic encryption, and machine learning. Koç has positions in multiple organizations, and his research is funded by several institutions, performed within Koç Lab.

Koç is the co-founder of the Conference on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (1999) which is the second largest cryptography conference in the world. Koç is also the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cryptographic Engineering, published by Springer since 2011. Koç was elected as an IEEE Fellow in 2007 for his contributions to cryptographic engineering. His Google Scholar h-index is 45. Koç is also among the top 100 Turkish scientists with most citations. He received the prestigious International Fellowship for Outstanding Researchers award from TÜBİTAK in 2020.