Italy and Israel pursue scientific cooperation

02 dicembre 2015

2 min di lettura

(AGI) Rome, Dec 2 - Italy and Israel will continue theircooperation in science, industry and publishing in 2016 withtwo calls for projects to be financed jointly over the next twoyears. Applications may be submitted by Italian companies,universities and research centres jointly with Israeli partnersby Mar. 7 and will cover the priority areas of bilateralcooperation in the fields of medicine, agriculture, theenvironment, new energy sources, innovative productionprocesses, information technology and space technologies forindustrial processes, neurodegenerative diseases of the motorsystem and new technologies applied to migration (details onthis web page). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs andInternational Cooperation (MAECI) is spearheading thisinitiative on the Italian side and the Ministry of Science,Technology and Space (MOST) and the Ministry of Economy (ISERD)for Israel. These two act as coordinating bodies for theimplementation of the intergovernmental agreement forindustrial, scientific and technological cooperation signed inBologna in 2000 and that came into force in 2002. "Today,thanks to the tools provided by the Agreement, 127 industrialdevelopment projects and 50 basic research projects have beencarried out, with the involvement of the best scientific andmanufacturing organisations in Italy and Israel. Our aim is tofurther exploit the potential of the Agreement and this is why,from 2016, the teams that present the request for cooperationfor the development of industrial projects will, among otherthings, have access to an advance of the funds awardedfollowing the evaluation process," said Roberto Cantone, headof MAECI's unit for scientific and technological cooperation,as part of a presentation event of the call that took place atthe Foreign Ministry in the presence of over 70 researchbodies, universities and industrial associations. "Israel isthe third most important country in the world for innovativecapacity and here Italy is seen as a valuable partner in theindustrialisation stage of products and technologies, thanks tothe diversification, flexibility and size of its industrialsystem. These synergies have found direct application in sevenjoint Italian-Israeli laboratories, that have been possible toset up in under 15 years due to the Agreement in question,"added Stefano Boccaletti, science attache at the Italianembassy in Tel Aviv. One of the innovations in 2016 will be theRita Levi Montalcini Prize, which aims to encourage themobility of leading international academics. (AGI) . .