USISTF Travels to Atlanta, Georgia to Present USISTF and foster cooperation with Conexx

May 14th, 2014

USISTF staff traveled to Atlanta, Georgia to meet with the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce Southeast (now known as Conexx), leading academics, and business people interested in our work including the 2013 US-Israel Innovation Index.  Our first meeting took place at Georgia Tech with faculty members in attendance from Mercer, University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Kennesaw State, Georgia State, and Morehouse.  USISTF detailed pathways to funding for the research institutions and our hopes of implementing a statewide R&D agreement between Georgia and Israel’s Ministry of Economy.  USISTF used the meeting to accelerate work with Georgia Tech on developing a cooperative University-Industry consortium program between our two countries.

USISTF held an evening reception at Peachtree Planning, organizing business members in the Atlanta community for the US-Israel Innovation Index.   Business communities were engaged in the work product, providing feedback to make the product more useful for companies in attendance like Coca-Cola and IBM.

“The Innovation Index shows that Israel’s innovation relationship with the United States is balanced, broad-based, and consistently strong in most indicators. Tracking these results over time will allow us to monitor the performance of the relationship. It serves as a professional set of metrics which will allow us to observe if there are changes, and subsequently address any potential negative trend, and re-enforce the  positives to ensure that it is,” said USISTF Executive Director Ann Liebschutz.

In summarizing the U.S.-Israel relationship in innovation, the study revealed that the relationships between the two governments were the strongest of those studied. However, in terms of sharing human capital, Israel is a mid-range performer trailing Canada, Switzerland, Finland and Sweden. In terms of private sector and industry relationships, Israel ranked second, behind Switzerland. Lastly, in research and development cooperation, the relative relationship between the countries is in the top tier, but lags behind Switzerland and Singapore.