Professor of computer science at the Weizmann Institute of Science. From 1989 to 1995, he headed the Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute, and from 1998 to 2005 served as dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. In the past, Prof. Harel was involved in diverse areas of theoretical computer science; the foci of his current research are software and systems engineering methods and languages, and the modeling and analysis of biological systems. Prof. Harel is the inventor of Statecharts, a graphical language for describing the dynamics of systems, widely used in industry throughout the world.In 2004, Prof. Harel received the Israel Prize; in 2007, he received the ACM Software System Award (shared with seven colleagues), and in 2010 the EMET prize. In 2010, he was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), received in 1978.

From 2011 to 2015, he was a member of the Initiative for Applied Education Research steering committee.