Opher Etzion

Opher Etzion (in Hebrew: עֹפר עציון) is an Israeli computer scientist.

He is a Professor and head of the IS Academic Department at the Zefat Academic College.

Etzion has been instrumental in the development of the complex event processing area of computer science.

Professional background
Etzion was the Chief Scientist of Event Processing at the IBM Haifa Research Lab. Previously, he was Lead Architect of Event Processing Technology at IBM Websphere and a Senior Manager at the IBM Research Division, managing a department that has pioneered projects shaping the field of event processing. He is also the founding chair of the Event Processing Technical Society.

Etzion serves as Professor and Academic Adviser to the MIS department of the Yezreel Valley College and Adjunct Professor at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Etzion has supervised several doctoral dissertations and masters theses.

He has authored or co-authored papers in technical journals and conferences on topics related to active databases, temporal databases, Rule-based systems, event processing and Autonomic computing. He has given several keynote address and tutorials and has been named an ACM Distinguished Speaker.

With Peter Niblett, he was the co-author of Event Processing in Action, a comprehensive technical book about event processing. He also co-edited the book Temporal Database - Research and Practice.

Prior to joining IBM in 1997, he was a faculty member and Founding Head of the Information Systems Engineering Department at Technion and held professional and managerial positions at Sapiens International Corporation and in the Israel Air Force.

Honors and awards

 * The Israeli Air Force Prize (the highest award for the Air Force), 1982
 * IBM Outstanding Innovation Award, 2002 and 2013
 * IBM Corporate Award, 2010
 * ACM Distinguished Speaker, 2011