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Ofer Arazy

Prof. Ofer Arazy

עברית | English

About▼

Prof. Ofer Arazy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Systems, Herta and Paul Amir Faculty of Social Sciences, at the University of Haifa. His research examines how information technology shapes knowledge-intensive collaboration — from the self-organizing communities that co-create digital public goods such as Wikipedia and open-source software, to citizen science initiatives, augmented reality, and recommender systems. His work bridges information systems (IS) and human-computer interaction (HCI), drawing on theories of human and social behavior from organization science, social psychology, and sociology, and applying computational and data-science methods to large-scale trace data.

Beyond his research and teaching, Prof. Arazy plays a leading role in university-wide initiatives that connect academic excellence with real-world impact. He is the founder and Head of Haifa Innovation Labs (HIL), the University's center for innovation and entrepreneurship, and he serves in the President's Office as Director of Innovation and Sustainability, promoting academia's "third mission" — supporting research and teaching that generate direct, positive impact on society and the environment.

Prof. Arazy holds a B.Sc. and MBA from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia (UBC). Prior to his academic career he held managerial positions in Israel's high-tech industry. He was previously on the faculty of the University of Alberta School of Business before joining the University of Haifa in 2013.

Publications▼

Education▼

  • Ph.D., Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada — 1998–2004. Dissertation: Artificial Semantics in Text Retrieval.
  • MBA, Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology — 1994–1997.
  • B.Sc., Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology — 1989–1993.

Academic Background▼

Prof. Arazy is an industrial engineer by training. After completing his B.Sc. and MBA at the Technion, he spent several years in mid-level managerial roles in the Israeli high-tech industry, including as Operations Manager at Jacada Inc., an international, NASDAQ-listed software company. Following a career change, he pursued a Ph.D. at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia (UBC), where his dissertation investigated text-processing and information-retrieval methods.

Upon graduating in 2004, he joined the University of Alberta's School of Business as an Assistant Professor, later earning tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. During his time at Alberta (2004–2014), his research shifted toward the behavioral side of information systems, and he also held an adjunct appointment in Humanities Computing. In 2013 he moved to the University of Haifa.

Throughout his career, Prof. Arazy has combined research with substantial academic-administrative and service contributions. At the University of Haifa, he has coordinated industry relations for the Department of Information Systems (2014–2019), chaired the Department's Master's program committee, served on the Faculty's Research Committee, and sat on the University's Data Science Center board. Since 2018 he has served as founder and Head of Haifa Innovation Labs (HIL), the University's center for innovation and entrepreneurship, and since 2021 as Director of Innovation and Sustainability in the President's Office, leading the University's strategic sustainability agenda.

Internationally, he has served as Associate Editor of MIS Quarterly (MISQ) — the flagship journal of the field — across two terms, as an editor for additional journals and conferences (including the Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS) and the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). He reviews regularly for leading journals in information systems, human-computer interaction, and information science, as well as for research councils in Canada, Hong Kong, and the United States, and serves as an external referee for tenure and promotion cases.

Prof. Arazy has supervised or co-supervised more than a dozen graduate students to completion (M.Sc. and Ph.D.) and several post-doctoral researchers.

Research Areas▼

Prof. Arazy's research centers on how information technology shapes knowledge-intensive collaboration and organizing, with particular attention to the balance between structure and individual agency in large-scale, self-organizing initiatives. His work is interdisciplinary, sitting at the intersection of Information Systems and Human-Computer Interaction, and connects to organizational behavior, social psychology, and sociology. His main areas of research interest include:
  • Peer production and online collaboration (e.g., Wikipedia, open-source communities)
  • Knowledge management and organizational knowledge sharing
  • Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW)
  • Human-computer interaction (HCI) and design science
  • Citizen science and volunteer-based scientific participation
  • Augmented and virtual reality — psychological ownership, social norms, and collaboration
  • Recommender systems and personalization
  • Information quality and information retrieval
  • Algorithmic advice and human-AI decision-making
  • His methodology is best described as computational social/organizational science: he draws on trace data from information systems and applies methods such as clustering, natural language processing, machine learning, bioinformatics-style sequencing, and game-theoretic and stochastic modeling.

Awards▼

  • AIS Best Information Systems Publication of the Year Award, Association for Information Systems, 2010
  • JAIS Paper of the Year Award, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 2010
  • Best Paper Award, iConference, 2011
  • One of his papers was selected as one of ACM Transactions on Social Computing's five Exemplary Research Articles

Additional Info▼

Founder and Head of Haifa Innovation Labs (HIL) — the University of Haifa's university-wide center for innovation and entrepreneurship. HIL bridges academia, industry, and the community, offering academic courses, accelerator programs, and hackathons in areas such as health and wellbeing, the blue economy, and sustainability and climate resilience. It supports interdisciplinary teams of students, researchers, and entrepreneurs using methodologies such as Lean Startup and Design Thinking.


Director of Innovation and Sustainability, Office of the President — leads the University of Haifa's Sustainability and Impact Initiative, promoting the University's "third mission" by supporting research projects and teaching offerings with a direct, positive impact on society and the environment, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Research funding — Prof. Arazy has secured competitive funding from bodies including Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Israel Innovation Authority, the Israel Council for Higher Education (VATAT), the Edmond de Rothschild Foundations, and the EU Horizon program, including grants supporting the University's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program, its Data Science Research Center, and initiatives for entrepreneurship in Arab society and the blue economy.