Research Infrastructures and Technical Personnel

In 2018, a 200M NIS program was launched, to provide financial support via a competitive bottom-up process, for the purchase and upgrade of institutional research infrastructures, and the employment of technical personnel. The program was established in response to the growing need for expensive and complex core research facilities that are essential for the promotion of advanced, ground-breaking science.

By 2022, four Calls for Proposals were issued. Each of the 8 public universities in Israel could request funding of up to $1M per proposal, as well as 50% (or up to 175K NIS per year) of the employment cost of the technical personnel for 4 years, pending matching funding from the university of min. 25% of the equipment grant, and a commitment to pay 50% of the employment cost of the technical personnel for four years, and 100% for additional four years. By the end of 2023, the program has supported the purchase of more than 40 research devices for a total sum of 136M NIS, including: cryogenic electron microscopes, imaging equipment (e.g., MRI), X-RAY machines, spectrometers, lithography equipment, HPC (High Performance Computing) infrastructures, and more.

In 2023, a considerable increase in the program’s budget was approved, reaching the total sum of 600M NIS, and the program itself was redesigned to include two tracks: (1) Financial support for the purchase and upgrade of research core facilities up to $1.25M per proposal; and (2) Financial support for the purchase of highly complex research core facilities up to $5M per proposal. The matching funding conditions, and the financial support for the employment of technical personnel remain unchanged.

In order to strengthen the connection between the biomedical sciences and engineering (Bio-Convergence), priority will be given to one bio-convergence equipment request per cycle (in the second track), as long as it receives a score that is comparable to or higher than requests in all other fields.

Research-Associate Program

In 2023, a five-year initiative was launched to promote breakthrough research and maximize the investment in research infrastructures by providing financial support for the recruitment of research associates and staff scientists to select laboratories. The initiative, which began as a joint project together with the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, is poised to assist the national mission of “brain (re)gain” as it offers an additional academic employment track for post-docs abroad and new-immigrant scientists (further details can be found here).

Of the initiative’s 348M NIS total budget (spread over 5 cycles), one third will be provided by the Planning and Budgeting Committee, covering a third of the 5-year employment cost of the research associates/staff scientists that will be selected via a competitive process. The remaining two-thirds will be covered by the university and the Principal Investigator (PI). New-immigrants and returning-resident scientists will be entitled to additional assistance from the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, to the extent of one third of the researcher's employment costs, thereby reducing the participation of the university and the Principal Investigator by half.

Call for Proposals: Second Cycle (2024) of the Research-Associate Program – Submission Deadline - May 12, 2024