His research interests are in the areas of information theory, machine learning, distributed computing, secure and private learning/computing, and federated learning.

Dr. Avestimehr has received various awards for his research and teaching, including The 2019 IEEE Information Theory Society James L. Massey Research & Teaching Award, an Information Theory Society and Communication Society Joint Paper Award, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from President Obama, a Young Investigator Program (YIP) award from the U. S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, the David J. Sakrison Memorial Prize, and several Best Paper Awards at Conferences. He has been an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. He was a general Co-Chair of the 2020 International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT). He is also a Fellow of IEEE.