Five new Israeli-US academic projects in a variety of fields were recently given the go-ahead for joint collaboration between faculty and research scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU).

The grants – to run January 2015 to August 2016 – were approved by the MIT-Israel-Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Seed Fund, part of the MIT International Science and Technology (MISTI) Initiative Global Seed Funds.

BGU and MIT signed the agreement in May 2014 to create the fund to promote and support early-stage collaborations. It is the first seed MISTI seed fund in Israel, and covers travel and meeting costs to make international collaboration possible.

The approved proposals include: “Self-Sustained Agriculture Based on Marginal Water” — Prof. John Lienhard (MIT), Assistant Prof. Amos Winter (MIT), Prof. Jack Gilron (BGU), Dr. Naftali Lazarovitch (BGU), Prof. David Faiman (BGU) and Prof. Eilon Adar (BGU); “Improving the Delivery of Treatments in Spinal Cord Injury Using Ultrasound” — Prof. Robert Langer (MIT), Timothy O’Shea (MIT) and Dean Joseph (Yosi) Kost (BGU); “Identification of Epigenetic Quantitative Trait Loci Associated with Tomato Seed Germination” — Assistant Prof. Mary Gehring (MIT) and Assistant Prof. Aaron Fait (BGU); “Guiding Students’ Learning Using On-line Collaborative Annotation Tools” — Prof. David Karger (MIT) and Senior Lecturer Dr. Yakov (Kobi) Gal (BGU); and “Channel Photocurrent Spectroscopy: Characterization Tool for Heterostructure Transistors” — Prof. Jesus A. del Alamo (MIT) and Assistant Prof. Ilan Shalish (BGU).