Brent Waters received his PhD in computer science from Princeton University in 2004. From 2004-2005, he was a postdoc at Stanford University, then worked at SRI as a computer scientist. In 2008, he joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin. Waters's research interests are in the areas of cryptography computer security. His work has focused on Identity-Based Cryptography, Functional Encryption, and code obfuscation. He is noted as a founder of Functional Encryption and Attribute-Based Encryption.

Waters has been the recipient of a NSF CAREER award, a Microsoft Faculty Fellow, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Packard Science and Engineering Fellowship, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers recipient; winner of the 2015 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, and a Simons Investigator.