He has served as the director of the project since its beginning (the 2009-2012 seasons as co-director with Dr. Joe Uziel). He has extensive experience in field archaeology of different periods. He worked for more than a decade at the Tell es-safi/Gath project and served as director of a number of other excavations. Dr. Shai finished his PhD at Bar Ilan University (under the advising of Prof. Aren Maeir) and was a post-fellow at the Harvard University and a junior research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University.