Applications must be developed and written jointly by a team of Israeli and U.S. scientists that hold academic appointments in their respective countries and are eligible to apply for external funding at organizations such as NSF and BSF.
Eligibility:
1. For the BSF submission: Israeli principal investigators must have obtained a PhD, MD or an equivalent degree, and must be faculty members or the equivalent of the submitting institutions. Graduate students or postgraduate fellows are not eligible to submit applications.
2. Scientists who wish to apply for grants must submit their applications through a legal entity. The BSF accepts research applications from non-profit organizations only, including institutions of higher learning, government research institutions and hospitals. Although applications cannot be submitted by for-profit or industrial organizations, one of the principal investigators may be affiliated with such an organization. However, the research performed by the investigator affiliated with a for-profit organization will not be funded by the BSF, unless specified differently.
3. In keeping with an amendment, signed on 28 October 2020, to the original agreement between the U.S. and Israeli governments, the Foundation sponsors US-Israel collaborative research with participation of all Israeli academic institutions, including research carried out in geographic areas that came under the administration of the Government of Israel after June 5, 1967.
4. It is noted here that the BSF does not invite applications involving, directly or indirectly, the Arab-Israeli conflict. Any application that is related to any aspect of the Arab-Israeli conflict should be discussed with the BSF staff before submission. The Foundation reserves the right to reject such applications, if in its sole discretion, it deems these not consistent with its mission.
5. The following additional rules apply to this program:
- A U.S. scientist submitting an application with an Israeli colleague to the NSF is only subject to the NSF eligibility rules.
- Each Israeli scientist is allowed to submit one NSF-BSF application each year (1 Oct - 30 Sept).
- An Israeli with an active BSF research grant is allowed to submit an application to any of the NSF-BSF programs.
- An Israeli with an active NSF-BSF grant is not allowed to submit a new application to any NSF-BSF program before the last year of their current grant.
- It is allowed to submit both to an NSF-BSF program and the regular BSF program, including similar applications. In the event that grants are awarded in both programs, both will be funded, unless the research applications are mostly similar, or significantly overlap, in which case only the NSF-BSF program will be funded by the BSF.
- In case of similar NSF-BSF and regular BSF applications, in which the NSF evaluation of the NSF-BSF application was not completed by the time the regular BSF awards are made, the BSF will defer its decision regarding a possible grant to this application, until the NSF-BSF awards are announced.
For additional eligibility information, see page 4 of Call for Proposals in Attached Files below.
Meetings at conferences or other locations outside of the investigators’ institutions, which were allowed in recent years, are no longer supported. In the NSF-BSF program, the BSF grant may be used only by members of the Israeli research team, and it cannot be used to cover any of the travel expenses of the U.S. PI to Israel.
