Elad Harison is an Assistant Professor in Business and Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) at the Department of Economics, University of Groningen. He obtained his Ph.D., entitled "Software Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs): Economics and Policy Analysis", from MERIT in November 2005. Prior to his doctoral studies, he completed his B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and Management and his Master in Engineering at the Technion, Israel. During that period, he was working as a logistic engineer and later as an information systems analyst (in SAP) at the Israeli Navy's Computing Center. In September 1999 he joined the Ph.D. programme at MERIT, where he conducted his research as a doctoral fellow (OiO). During his studies, he has completed two research projects on "Intellectual Property Rights in a Knowledge-Based Economy" with Robin Cowan for the Dutch Advisory Council for Science and Technology Policy (AWT). He was involved in several research projects for the European Commission elaborating issues of IPRs in Internet-based collaborations, the role of patents and copyrights in innovation policies and the economic effects of software patents.

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