Dr. Yair Sharan is currently the director of  the FIRS2T group active in the security and technology field He was the director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Technological Analysis and Forecasting (ICTAF) at Tel Aviv University Israel and a senior associate researcher in Begin-Saadat Center for strategic studies (BESA) in Bar Ilan University in Israel. He is a Col (res) in the IDF. He served in the Israeli MOD /IDF as head of a major R&D division responsible for strategic thinking and planning as well as leading critical defense projects. Fields include protection against non-conventional weapons, counter terrorism, non lethal weapons, anti missiles development and more.

He earned a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics. He earned his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from the Weizmann institute of Science. He served as Israeli Science Attaché in Germany between 1988 and 1992.  He was a senior consultant to the Israeli Ministry of Science in 1992–1993, and coordinated the relations of the University of Tel-Aviv with the EU in 1993–2003. He was a senior researcher at ICTAF in 1992–2000 and was the Director of the Center since 2000 until 2013. .

His main fields of interest are Strategic thinking on national security issues, science and technology policy, the impact of technology on national strategy, technology foresight and security foresight and more. Together with colleagues researchers, he participated in many EU projects including the projects SIAM, e-Leaving, OPET, Nano2Life, Platform Foresight and others. He coordinated several EU projects including FESTOS in the security program and PRACTIS in Science in Society program.  He has been co-director of several NATO SPS workshops. Dr. Sharan is co-director of the Israeli node of the Millennium Project, a member of the American Future Society and has been a member of the EU Foresight Expert Group. Dr Sharan has long experience in international projects and consultancy with countries like the US, the EU, Switzerland, France and others.

Dr Sharan has a special interest in the security field and has completed studies in topics like “Non Conventional Terrorism”, “Psychological Deterrence”, “Emerging Technologies” and “Future Threats of Terrorism”, "Lone Actors' Terrorism", “Issues in water security”, and more. He is co-author of the book "Lone Wolf Terrorism Prospects"(2015) and co-editor of "Lone Actors- an Emerging Security Threat" (2015). He is also co-editor of three books including “terrorism on the internet”, “medical response to emergency situations” and “Water security in emergency situations. Current studies include "lonely wolf- an emerging terror threat", "Synthetic Biology- Risks and Chances", "emerging technologies and their impact on security and privacy".