Prof. David Harel

Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics

Prof. David Harel was born in London and came to Israel as a child. He earned his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1978), spent two years working at IBM's Research Center in New York, and joined the Weizmann Institute in 1980. He headed its Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics (1989-1995), and served as Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science (1998-2004). He holds the William Sussman Professorial Chair in Mathematics.

Prof. Harel’s research focuses on computer science, including the limits of computation, software and systems engineering, visual languages, modeling biology, and the communication and synthesis of odor. The inventor of the widely used graphical language of Statecharts and co-inventor of Live Sequence Charts (LSCs), he is one of the creators of Statemate, Rhapsody, the Play-Engine, and PlayGo, software products that greatly simplify the design of complex systems. 
He has consulted to the Israel Aircraft Industries, among others, and has spent sabbaticals at Carnegie-Mellon University, Cornell University, and the University of Edinburgh. He was one of the Founders of I-Logix, Inc. (eventually acquired by IBM).

In 2015, Prof. Harel was elected Vice President of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He is the author of over 250 papers and of several books, including Algorithmics: The Spirit of Computing (1987, 1992, 2004), Computers Ltd.: What They Really Can't Do (2000), and Come, Let's Play: Scenario-based Programming Using LSCs and the Play-Engine (with R. Marelly, 2003). Among his many awards are the ABZ Platinum Gold Medal from ETH Zurich (2013), the EMET Prize (2010), the ACM Software System Award (2007),  the Israel Prize (2004), and the ACM’s Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award (1992). He holds five honoris causa degrees, and is a member of the Academia Europea, a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  

In 2014, Prof. Harel celebrated both 30 years of Statecharts, and his 64th birthday with special conferences in Vienna and the Weizmann Institute in his honor.

Prof. Harel has five children and seven grandchildren. His main hobby is photography.