International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX)

Director - Robert Reno

The IREX Mission

The International Research and Exchanges Board is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting mutual understanding and international cooperation between the United States and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia and Northeast Asia.

Strategy

In collaboration with partners in the public, private and academic sectors, IREX sponsors educational exchanges, professional
training and international seminars to achieve three mutually reinforcing goals:
- to foster scholarship, strengthen university leadership, and improve policy analysis and development in the US;
- to help partner countries successfully develop their intellectual, social, economic and political communities by improving research capabilities, expanding access to information resources, bolstering professional and civic institutions, and increasing corporate and media skills;
- to forge partnership links between universities, policymakers, professional and civic associations, and corporate and media groups in the US and abroad.

Impact

Together with its predecessor organization, the Inter-University Committee on Travel Grants which began work in 1958, IREX has since its founding and assumption of these responsibilities in 1968 provided research grants and logistical support to over 6,400 US scholars studying in the former Soviet region. At the same time, IREX has helped over 26,00 foreign leaders from academic institutions, professional associations, government, business, and media meet and build working contacts with counterparts here in the United States.