Recently in 2016, the Israel-U.S Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation www.birdf.com funded two projects selected by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) www.dhs.gov and the Israeli Ministry of Public Security (MOPS) http://mops.gov.il to help advance technologies specifically to help first responders.
The BIRD Foundation promotes collaboration between U.S. and Israeli companies in technological fields to develop products jointly. So far, in addition to providing conditional grants of up to $1 million for approved projects, the foundation assists by working with companies to identify potential partners. To date, BIRD’s total investment in joint projects has been over $330 million.
The U.S and Israel together have identified a number of First Responders Capability Gaps such as:
- Ability to know the location of responders and their proximity to risks and hazards in real time
- Ability to incorporate information from multiple and non-traditional sources such as crowdsourcing and social media into incident command and operations.
- Developing communications systems that are hands-free, ergonomically–optimized and can be integrated into personal protective equipment.
- Ability to identify trends, patterns, and important content from large volumes of information from multiple sources to support decision-making
- Ability to develop technology and devices for handling long term emergencies in urban areas
- Developing remote detection capabilities for weapons on a person’s body, personal belongings or baggage
The U.S and Israel are promoting and funding advanced technologies for the joint project, the “NextGen First Responder Technologies” program. Recently, a Call for Proposals for “NextGen First Responder Technologies” was issued.
To be considered, a project proposal will need to include R&D cooperation between two companies or cooperation between a company and a university/research institution. Innovation is needed in several areas to include communications, data analysis, sensors, simulation and training and wearable technologies, but also in other areas.
The maximum conditional grant funding is $1 million per project. The Executive Summary is due February, 2017, final proposal due April 5, 2017, with the final decision on the proposal to occur June 2017.
For information contact Enat Sprivat at einat@birdf.com or call 972-3-698-8301 or contact Anrea Yonas in the U.S at andreay@birdf.com or call 609-356-0305.
Also, the BIRD Foundation provides additional funding for other types of projects. In December 2016, at a meeting held in Tel Aviv Israel, BIRD approved $7.2 million for eight new projects between U.S. and Israeli companies. In addition, to the grants from BIRD, the projects will access private sector funding boosting the total value of all projects to about $17 million.
Several projects approved for funding will enable Novellus DX http://novellusdx.com in Jerusalem and Christiana Care Health System www.christianacare.org in Delaware to work together to develop in-vitro mutagenesis for a functional characterization of patient mutations.
Another approved project for funding involves Pluristem Therapeutics www.pluristem.com in Haifa and the New York Blood Center http://nybloodcenter.org who are working together to develop placenta derived PL-X-R18 cells to improve the efficiency of cord blood for hematopoietic regeneration.
Projects submitted to this specific funding program are reviewed by evaluators appointed by the U.S federal agency NIST www.nist.gov within the Department of Commerce and by the Israel Innovation Authority at the Israel Ministry of Economy and Industry. The next BIRD funding cycle for projects in this category is March 3, 2017 and approval of projects will take place June 2017.