US-Israel partnerships awards $2.3M for homeland security projects

U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation awarded $2.3 million to three groups to develop advanced technologies for homeland security.

The BIRD Foundation is an initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and the Israel Ministry of Public Security (MOPS) to accelerate cooperation between U.S. and Israeli companies, academia and other research institutions for joint product development.

“S&T’s participation in the BIRD HLS program is another great example of ways we seek innovative solutions to homeland security challenges,” DHS Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Under Secretary for Science and Technology William Bryan said. “The results of these projects should provide positive results for both DHS and MOPS.”

The 2019 awards went to three groups, including Blue White Robotics (Tel Aviv, Israel) and Easy Aerial (New York, N.Y.), to develop drone command and control capability. Another went to S.H. Goren Management and Innovation (Emek Hefer, Israel) and 3AM (Buffalo, N.Y.) to develop a personal device for firefighters that provides a real-time indoor location tracking of people. The third went to Cawamo (Hod Hasharon, Israel) and LiveView Technologies (Orem, Utah) to develop an artificial intelligence-based analytics video security solution for remote sites.

The program funds up to 50 percent of the combined project budget, up to $1 million per project.

“Expanding the BIRD portfolio to the broader homeland security mission has been a welcome addition,” Eitan Yudilevich, executive director of the BIRD Foundation, said. “We are pleased this new cycle helped recruit new companies to the BIRD ecosystem while continuing to build our strong working relationship with DHS and MOPS.”