(Israel Hayom/JNS) Israel’s Council for Higher Education (CHE) has earmarked some $56 million to the NSF-BSF, a prestigious joint U.S.-Israel program made up of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF). The funds, which will be allocated over a period of five years, will facilitate dozens of research programs each year in a variety of fields, expanding on the handful of research programs currently being carried out.
The NSF-BSF program was launched in 2013 to encourage collaboration between American and Israeli researchers. Through this program, researchers from both countries jointly submit proposals to the NSF-BSF, which reviews submissions and selects the winning proposals.
The prestigious program distributes grants in a variety of fields, including exact sciences, engineering, computer science, natural and life sciences, earth and environmental sciences, economics and psychology.
The NSF-BSF program enables American academics to collaborate with Israeli researchers, for whom this significantly increases research opportunities with U.S.-based scientific establishments. At the same time, the program contributes to improving the reputation of science in Israel and reinforcing internationalization in the higher education system.
Israel is among the few countries to have joint research programs with the NSF.