Government and public bodies are primary sources of R&D funding,
providing financial support for well over half of Israel’s R&D activities.
The major share of these funds for civilian R&D purposes is allocated for
economic development, mainly in the industrial and agricultural sectors, which,
in comparison with other countries, constitutes a very large part of the total.
Over 40 percent is used to advance knowledge through national, binational, and
government research funds and through individual university allocations from the
General University Fund administered by the Council of Higher
Education. The remainder is dedicated to various health and social welfare
fields.
Over 80 percent of all publishable Israeli research - and almost all basic
research and basic research training - is conducted within the universities. The
Israel Science
Foundation (ISF), a legally independent body, is the predominant source of
competitive basic research funding. Some 1,000 individual researchers receive
grants from ISF, matched with university funding. ISF also funds special
programs, such as Israel’s participation in building the ATLAS detector for the
Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and improving the quality of clinical research
via an innovative series of ‘physician-researcher’ grants.
To fund and coordinate research initiatives too large for any one agency to
handle, there is TELEM, a voluntary forum composed of the chief scientists of
the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Labor and the Ministry of Science, the
president of the Israel Academy, and representatives of the Council for Higher
Education, the Treasury, and others. TELEM engineered, and where necessary
funded, Israel’s entry into the European Union’s Framework Program, membership
in the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and Israel's Internet II
initiative.
The large number of patents taken out by Israel’s universities is one measure
of the effectiveness of the relationship between the universities and
industry.