The Israel-United States Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation is an organization that provides capital for joint industrial research and development (R&D) between American and Israeli companies. BIRD was established in 1977 by the governments of the United States and Israel.
Each BIRD project involves a partnership between a U.S. and an Israeli company. Up to 50 percent of the funding is supplied by BIRD and at least 50 percent by the partnership. The source of the funding is an endowment provided equally by the two governments. The current BIRD endowment is $110 million. BIRD also receives annual funding from both governments for the BIRD Energy program.
Since its inception, BIRD has approved more than 900 projects, provided more than $300M in grants (~$500M adjusted to inflation). BIRD projects have yielded an estimated $10B in sales. The BIRD Foundation is considered by some analysts to be a successful model of binational R&D collaboration.[1][2]
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Transcription
♫MUSIC♫ DAVID MINDELL: We're doing three things basically. The first was to look at relationships amongst all the extant birds, all of today's birds, we wanted to figure out how they're related to each other. What's the genealogy for these groups of birds. Secondly, we wanted to determine something about how old they were, determine their ages. And the third part of the study, we wanted to find out if whole genomes, genome scale data sets would really provide sort of a magic bullet that people have hoped it would in determining the relationships. So those are three broad aspects of the study. Our most novel finding was that within this group that I talk about, is neoaves, including the vast majority of today's birds, we found a basic division between two groups, which we've had to name and we've called them Columbea and Passerea. And the Columbea includes all the pigeons and doves as well as sandgrouse and mesites and grebes and flamingos. And the other group, Passerea, includes everything else. The earliest diversification within birds happened over 90 million years ago, so it's a very ancient group. The earliest split within neoaves is more on the order of between 72 and 66 million years ago so that's right at the end of the cretaceous. And that diversification is really younger than people had thought prior to this analysis of a very large data set. So we've kind of moved the ages up closer in time to the present. Our efforts to get whole genomes for 48 new species of birds really has paid off because it has allowed us to resolve some of these relationships within this diverse group that I mentioned called neoaves. And we've found that as we've added more data to our datasets, we got increasingly clearer picture and better statistical support for the nodes. And so what we found too that's interesting and that supports some earlier work, is that falcons in fact are relatively closely related to songbirds. The only bird that's inside that relationship is the parrots so you've got all the songbirds being most closely related to the parrots, and then most closely related to that group are the falcons. One of the other findings is that actually raptors are not a single group that arose once but a group that has two independent origins and in fact the falcons are very much different from the hawks and eagles. They are not each other's closest relatives. So that's a independent origins for the raptorial lifestyle so it was a very relatively deep split that separated those two groups. As people are looking outside and seeing birds in their backyard and doing Christmas bird counts, it's worth noting the extent to which human behavior now has an influence on avian populations and that maintaining this diversity of unique lifestyles that we see is increasingly dependent on human beings and their abilities to do, to practice wise stewardship of natural habitats. So we have sort of received these different forms of birds over evolutionary time periods into the present and what their future might be in a way is dependent upon our own wise stewardship of the environments. ♫MUSIC♫
Early history
In July 1974, the US and Israeli governments established a joint Committee for Investment and Trade, staffed by representatives of the two governments. Its task was to find ways to promote closer economic ties between the two nations, with discussions being held throughout 1975 and early 1976. The initial agreement to establish the BIRD Foundation was signed by U.S. Secretary of the Treasury William E. Simon and Israel Finance Minister Yehoshua Rabinowitz, on March 3, 1976.
In February 1975 a private sector group was formed to promote closer links between U.S. and Israeli scientific and technological enterprises. This group, composed of leading research and development executives from both U.S. and Israeli industry, was instrumental in providing advice and support to the Joint Committee during negotiations for the establishment of the Foundation. As discussions continued between the two governments, another significant private sector initiative was taking place. The Committee for the Economic Growth of Israel (CEG-I) was formed during March 1976, as an autonomous, voluntary organization of American and Israeli business people who joined forces to promote exports and investment in Israel.
In late April 1977, the U.S. Congress passed the legislation providing the funding for BIRD. This was signed by President Jimmy Carter on May 4, 1977. At the same time the Knesset authorized the funding of the Israeli portion of the BIRD endowment.
BIRD was formally established in a ceremony in Washington DC on May 18, 1977, with the exchange of letters between Assistant Secretary of the Treasury C. Fred Bergsten and Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz.
BIRD started with an endowment of $60 million; $30 million from each country. In 1984, the endowment was increased to $110 million.
Leadership
BIRD is managed by a Board of Governors (BOG) which appoints an Executive Director. The BOG consists of six members, three from each country, representing the Departments of Commerce, State and Treasury (U.S.), the Ministry of Economy and Industry and Ministry of Finance (Israel). The co-Chairmen of the BOG are a senior official from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Chief Scientist of the Israel Ministry of Economy and Industry.[5]
The following is the list of BIRD Executive Directors since inception:
| Name | Term |
|---|---|
| A. Wade Blackman Jr. | 1977–1979 |
| Dr. Ed Mlavsky[6][page needed] | 1979–1993 |
| Dan Vilenski | 1993–1997 |
| Dov Hershberg | 1997–2005 |
| Dr. Eitan Yudilevich | 2006–Present |
Procedures
BIRD approves projects twice a year, in June and in December.
Any pair of companies, one Israeli and one American, may jointly apply for BIRD support, so long as they have the combined capability and infrastructure to define, develop and commercialize innovative products based on industrial R&D. BIRD offers "conditional grants" for joint development projects. BIRD funds up to 50% of each company's R&D expenses associated with the joint project (up to a maximum of $1M per approved project). Repayments are due only if commercial revenues are generated as a direct result of the project.
The BIRD Energy[7] program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Israel Ministry of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Resources, approves projects once a year.[8]
See also
References
- ^ Start--Up Nation. 2009. pp. 162–164.
- ^ United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014
- ^ BIRD Foundation Annual Report 1978
- ^ "Partnering for Progress - BIRD: 30 Years of Collaboration 1977-2007". Archived from the original on 2016-09-05. Retrieved 2016-09-10.
- ^ "Annual Reports". www.birdf.com.
- ^ Mlavsky, Ed (2009). Milk and Honey and High-Tech. Jerusalem: Weill Publishers. ISBN 9789657405017.
- ^ Shamah, David (2015-11-25). "BIRD investment boost lends wings to alternative energy programs". The Times of Israel. Retrieved 2020-11-23.
- ^ "BIRD Foundation". birdf.com.
External links
This page was last edited on 16 May 2021, at 14:46