Dr. Yair Sharan

Dr. Yair Sharan is the director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Technological Analysis and Forecasting (ICTAF). He earned a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the Weizmann institute of Science. He served as Israeli Science Attaché in Germany between 1988–1992. 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 has been the Director of the Center since 2000. He is Co-Director of the Israel Future Society.
 
His main fields of interest are research and science policy, technology foresight and forecasting, technology assessment and security. Together with ICTAF researchers, he participated in many EU projects including the projects e-Leaving, OPET, Nano2Life, Platform Foresight and others. Yair is a member of the Millennium Project, a member of the American Future Society and a member of the EU Foresight Expert Group.
 
Publications in Israel include the “ICT Uptake in the Israeli Education System”, “Occupation for all”, and “The Development of Free Time”. His online publications include ICTAF Expert Survey on Nanobiotechnology (coauthored with Dr. Aharon Hauptman), Energy Forecasting Study, GPO Briefing on Biological Terrorism, Understanding the Defense Conversion Dilemma, Israeli Foresight Study towards the 21st Century,
 
Yair 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”, “Issues in water security”, and more. He is a member of the Scientific Oversight Committee of the center for Biological Terrorism at Tel Aviv University.