Dr Nir Paran

Dr Nir Paran received his Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where he studied the early stages of hepatitis B virus infection. He subsequently joined the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR), where he has worked for the past 24 years on various aspects of viral diseases, including virus identification and diagnostics, development of animal models, and the design of vaccines and therapeutics. At IIBR, he served as Head of the Virology Research Group and later as Head of the Department of Infectious Diseases. From 2008 to 2009, Dr Paran was an adjunct investigator at the Laboratory of Viral Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), NIH, where he collaborated with Prof. Bernard Moss on poxvirus replication. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he played a key role in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine and contributed to numerous studies on SARS-CoV-2 biology and related animal models. 

From 2023 to 2025, Dr Paran joined the laboratory of Prof. Matthias J. Schnell at the Jefferson Center for Vaccines and Pandemic Preparedness, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, USA. His work there focused on the development of rabies virus-based vaccines. Dr Paran is a member of the Advisory Committee for Pandemic Preparedness for the Israel Ministry of Health and serves on the World Health Organization (WHO) Advisory Committee for Variola Virus Research.