Shai Ben-David grew up in Jerusalem, Israel. He attended the Hebrew University studying physics, mathematics and psychology. He received his PhD under the supervision of Saharon Shelah and Menachem Magidor for a thesis in set theory (on non-provability of infinite combinatorial statements).
Dr. Ben-David was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto in the Mathematics and the Computer Science departments, and in 1987 joined the faculty of the CS Department at the Technion (Israel Institute Technology). He held visiting faculty positions at the Australian National University in Canberra (1997-8) and at Cornell University (2001-2004). In August 2004 he joined the School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo.