Prof. Ben-Or holds a Ph.D. Degree in Mathematics from Hebrew University (1982) and joined the staff of the Department of Computer Science at the Hebrew University in 1984 following a two-year post doctoral position at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science.
His main research interests are Theoretical Computer Science, Distributed Computation, Fault Tolerance, Cryptography and Quantum Computation.

He serves as scientific adviser to several Israeli academic grant agencies, and is a member of the academic committees overseeing the Leibniz Center for Research in Computer Science, the Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation, and the Center for Converging Sciences and Technologies at the Hebrew University. He has been a member of the Hebrew University Executive Committee (2000-2004), and of the Research and Development Fund Committee headed by the Chief Scientist of Israel's Ministry of Trade and Industry (1996-2000).