Michael A. Harrison (born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.) studied electrical engineering and computing for BS and MS at the Case Institute of Technology, and then received a PhD from the University of Michigan in Communication Sciences.
[1] In the 1960s, he worked with Sheila Greibach, Gene Rose, Ed Spanier, and Joe Ullian in a research group formed and led by Seymour Ginsburg, dedicated to formal language theory and the foundations of Computer Science.
[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][excessive citations] In 1975, he developed the HRU security model (named after its authors Harrison, Ruzzo, Ullman), an operating system level computer security model dealing with the integrity of access rights in the system.
[12][13][14][15] With his Ph.D. student Pehong Chen at Berkeley,[16][17][18][19] he founded the "Gain Technology" company (acquired by Sybase in 1992).
[1] Harrison is married to Susan L. Graham, the Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Computer Science Division of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.