Investigator-Initiated Research Award – Funding Level 1 – HT942526VRPIIRA
- Pre-proposals due 28 June 2026
- Up to USD$400,000 over 2 years
- supports exploratory, high-risk and high-reward research in the earliest stages of development.
- must have the potential to yield new avenues of investigation, such as new approaches, research tools or paradigms.
- Preliminary data not required but must be able to provide solid rationale of the research idea and demonstrate sufficient expertise on the investigating team.
- must address at least one of the focus areas
- Apply here
- Document – Program Announcement – HT942526VRPIIRA_GG
Investigator-Initiated Research Award – Funding Level 2 – HT942526VRPIIRA
- Pre-proposals due 28 June 2026
- Up to USD$1.2M over 3 years
- supports the advancement of research toward clinical translation.
- Partnering Principal Investigator option available
- may include any phase of research from basic through translational
- preliminary data required
- must address at least one of the focus areas
- Apply here
- Document – Program Announcement – HT942526VRPIIRA_GG
Translational Research Award – HT942526VRPTRA
- Pre-proposals due 28 June 2026
- Up to USD$1.6M over 3 years
- Supports translational research that transforms a promising discovery into new drugs, devices or clinical practice guidelines that are ready for definitive testing in clinical trials during or by the end of the period of performance
- Partnering Principal Investigator option available
- preliminary data required
- pre-clinical studies, clinical research or pilot clinical trials allowed
- full-scale clinical trials not allowed
- must address at least one of the focus areas
- Apply here
- Document – Program Announcement – HT942526VRPTRA_GG
Mentored Clinical Research Award – HT942526VRPMCRA
- Letters of Intent due 25 August 2026
- Up to USD$75,000 over 1.5 years
- Supports clinical research (eg research conducted with human subjects, samples, or data of human origin) by a clinician in training under an established mentor.
- Key personnel must include one established clinician, as the mentor and principal investigator, and one clinician in training as the mentee.
- Principal Investigator/Mentor – established clinician or PhD clinical scientist
- Mentee – clinician in training, fellow, resident, junior clinician, clinician in a PhD program
- may include a stand-alone study of high impact to vision injury care or the generation of clinical research data in preparation for a more expansive study.
- applications must include evidence of ethics approval or exemption
- pre-clinical research not allowed
- clinical trials not allowed
- cannot be used for salary support for mentor or mentee
- must address at least one of the focus areas
- Apply here
- Document – Program Announcement – HT942526VRPMCRA_GG
Clinical Trial Award – HT942526VRPCTA
- pre-proposals due 28 July 2026
- up to USD$2.6M over 3 years
- Supports the rapid implementation of clinical trials of new interventions for service-related eye injury or visual dysfunction.
- Applications must provide Investigational New Drug or Investigational Device Exemption application by application submission deadline for interventions that require regulatory authorisations; and must provide evidence of IND or IDE approval to receive funding.
- Applications must demonstrate access to the proposed intervention(s).
- Applications must demonstrate access to the target subject population(s).
- must address at least one of the focus areas
- Apply here
- Document – Program Announcement – HT942526VRPCTA_GG
Focus Areas
- Understand and treat eye injury or visual dysfunction as related to military exposure
- Diagnose, stabilize and treat eye injuries in austere environments and prolonged care settings
- Restore visual function after military exposure-related vision loss or severe visual impairment
