Michel Israel (Ph.D. Computer Science, The University of Paris 6, 1987), named an Outstanding Professor in 1999 by the French National University Council and previously the Counsellor for Science and Technology of the French Embassy in Japan (09/00-05/05), is currently (from 06/05) the Counsellor for Science and Technology of the French Embassy in Washington , DC .

Dean of the Faculty of Fundamental and Applied Sciences at the University of Evry, France until September of 2000, Israel was founder and Chair of the Computer Science Department as well as founder and Director of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) Laboratory on Information Methodologies at the university. Israel has also been the EU chair of an EU-US computer science consortium (1997-2000) for the exchange of master students, a visiting professor at both the University of Toronto (1986) and the University of Galatasaray, Turkey (1999), and was one of the initiators of a Japan-France doctoral college en 2003.

Michel Israel is a senior member of the IEEE-Computer Society where he serves on the Board of Governors and in the past 24 years has held various positions such as the Audit Committee Chair (2004), VP for Technical Activities (2000), Chair of the Central & Eastern European Initiative Committee (99-00), Treasurer (98-99), DATC Chair (94-98), Secretary (97), Ombudsman, and Chair of the European Activities Committee. Israel is an IEEE-CS Golden Core member and received the IEEE Millennium medal.

Professor Israel has been the coordinator for the new French Association on Information Technology in 1998. He was a member of the Accreditation Board for CS of the French Ministry of Education and has more than 90 publications in the fields of design automation and distance learning.