The Finance Ministry, Defense Ministry, and Industry Ministry will jointly budget a new program to finance R&D for technologies with both military and civilian applications.
The Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Defense, and Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor will jointly budget a new program to finance R&D for dual-use technologies, that is technologies with military and civilian applications. The program will have a NIS 30 million budget, with each ministry providing one-third. On the basis of the approved budget, a joint steering committee of the Office of the Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Defense's Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure has chosen 17 projects with dual-use potential.
Chief Scientist Avi Hasson said that the selected ventures work in materials engineering, communications, and software. Some of the projects are in the applied research stage at an academic research institute; others are being promoted as collaboration between academic institutions and industrial companies, with technological know-how being transferred from the institutions to industry; and other ventures are developing new applications through to the product development proof of feasibility stage. He said that the projects would receive aid and budgets for 24-30 months, subject to meeting targets.
This is the first time that the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Industry are cooperating in a special program, called Meimad (Leveraging Dual-Use R&D), to develop dual-use products. Program director Ilan Peled told "Globes", "The convergence between commercial products and military systems is a process that has been accelerating over the years. Systems which were once used exclusively by military units or intelligence services are now integrated in personal computers, smartphones, navigating applications, and so on. With this new program, we can at an early stage bring to bear the potential of local innovation, to boost economic growth and to meet current battlefield needs."
In a separate development, Life Technologies Corporation (Nasdaq: LIFE), a US developer of systems for science, pharmaceuticals, and biomedical research laboratories, and Hasson have signed a cooperation agreement under Israel's program for promoting collaboration between the government and multinationals. The Office of the Chief Scientist will help Life Technologies locate technologies relevant to its business and assist in their development with designated support grants.