Rina Dechter is a professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD in Computer Science at UCLA in 1985, a MS degree in Applied Mathematics from the Weizmann Institute and a B.S in Mathematics and Statistics from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

Her research centers on computational aspects of automated reasoning and knowledge representation including search, constraint processing and probabilistic reasoning. Professor Dechter is an author of the book "Constraint Processing" published by Morgan Kaufmann, 2003, and has authored over 100 research papers, and has served on the the editorial boards of: Artificial Intelligence, the Constraint Journal, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research and the Encyclopedia of AI. She was awarded the Presidential Young investigator award in 1991 and is a fellow of the American association of Artificial Intelligence. She was a Radcliffe fellow 2005-2006.