The BIRD Foundation (Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial R&D Foundation) has recently awarded two grants to Virginia companies.   Grants of up to $1 million are awarded for joint R&D projects between Israeli and US technology companies.  Considered one of the most successful funding programs of its kind, new technologies resulting from these grants have generated sales topping $7.5 billion over the past thirty years since BIRD's inception.
 
Fulcrum IT Services, Inc. of Manassas, Virginia and SoftExpress, Ltd. of
Netanya, Israel received a $900,000 grant in June, 2007, to develop a consumer application for live mobile video.  The project, called "Vidrunner", is a P2P software application for the sender, a Java applet for the viewer, and a service for making the c connections.  The patented three node architecture is carrier and hardware independent and minimizes infrastructure and bandwidth requirements. The application administrator node enables unique billing, reporting and location-based display capabilities.  According to Peter Lazar of Fulcrum, "We believe that Vidrunner will facilitate the growth of live mobile P2P video streaming, as Skype similarly launched VOIP into the mainstream.  Like Skype, Vidrunner is scalable to a huge user-base at a low cost."

The Virginia BioTechnology Research  Park and Business Development Center in cooperation with their strategic partners, has teamed with an Israeli company, R&D Supports, to develop the next generation of orthopedic braces.  They have received an $800,000 grant to develop a new category of  “adjustable mobility bracing” for the wrist, which accelerates the healing process according to Prof. Daniel Reis MD, the founder of the Israeli company.  Donna Edmonds, who has lead the Virginia effort in the Center, explains that “the BIRD Foundation, after visiting our Center, has agreed that the strength of our commercial partnerships and the collaboration with the Center” will accelerate US market entry.

 
Other Virginia successes in the past:
BIRD is highly involved in fostering projects in the homeland security area. In 2005, BIRD approved a development project for MATE (Media Access Technologies), an Israeli company with a marketing office in McLean, Va., and American Dynamics, to create an innovative and intelligent video-analysis DVR for the homeland security market.   After a year of joint research, the two companies unveiled Behavior Watch Snap-Inâ„¢, an Active X control that seamlessly integrates Behavior Watch video analytics with the Intellex Network Client GUI (Graphic User Interface). The ingenuity of this project is to provide the end user with a complete solution to detect a variety of behaviors, as well as to record and manage the video in a single-seat operation. This high-level integration reduces training, response time and equipment costs while preserving unparalleled ease of use.
 
Another recent BIRD project addressed the critical need to provide communications-on-the-move for military and government, which, until recently, had to rely on products that were clumsy, very expensive and rare. RaySat, an Israeli company with offices in Vienna, Va., together with iDirect Technologies in Herndon, Va., jointly developed a system that is smaller and much more affordable.  It is based on an antenna called StealthRay, which can track a satellite from a speeding vehicle while providing a reliable high-speed connection for data, voice and video information.
 
Mr. Ralph Robbins, the Executive Director of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board, and a BIRD Representative in the region, explains that his office helps both Israeli and Virginia companies find each other for projects.   When asked if the grants can lead to significant economic development, Ralph points out that "an earlier BIRD project lead to the establishment of Gilat's US headquarters in McClean, Virginia where they employed over 350 people."