He studied at Ironi Alef High School in Tel-Aviv and served at the Israeli Air Force as an electronics technician.

[8] His thesis on "Model and Optimization of a Machining Process and its Control", was supervised by Prof. Ehud Lenz.

From 1980 to 1982, Koren was on sabbatical and leave of absence at the University of Michigan, where he was the Paul G. Goebel Visiting Professor of Engineering.

In 1992, CARMEL won the first Autonomous Mobile Robot Competition sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

[23] Shan and Koren built a 7-link snake; its first link had a camera, and 6 motors were installed at the 6 joints to provide forward motion.

Shan and Koren were the first to develop a model of how external objects could affect kinematic constraints on the movement of a snake robot in 1993.

[29] Koren introduced the RMS structural architecture and its benefits to the international manufacturing research community in 1999.

[30][32][33] Koren proposed a new manufacturing system architecture that enables producing Market-of-One products at affordable cost.

[35] Yoram is married to Alina (MA in literature) who was a lecturer at the University of Michigan, and they have two children: Shlomy and Esther (who died in October 2020).