VRP Program Committee Finalizes FY2018 Awards, Begins
FY2019 Planning

Legislative Update
March 28, 2019

Colonel Mark Reynolds, Chief of the joint DOD/VA Vision Center of Excellence (VCE) with Blinded Veterans Association (BVA) President Tom Zampieri, PhD at the VRP Committee meeting

On March 26, the Department of Defense (DOD) Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) Vision Research Program (VRP) Committee met to finalize the Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 awards (funded at $15 million), selecting ten for funding that included: four Expansion Awards (EA), which fund research projects that previously received VRP funding so they can further the research, for a total of $3.04 million; five Investigator-Initiated Research Awards (IIRA), for a total of $4.16 million; and one Focused Translational Team Science Award (FTTSA), for a total of $5.86 million. In addition, a list of alternate projects was selected and will be funded if additional money becomes available. The VRP will now begin the process of negotiating grant contracts with the selected researchers.

On March 27, the VRP Program Committee then met to begin planning for the FY2019 funding cycle, in which the VRP is funded at $20 million. It expects to release a Pre-Announcement in early April, with the full Program Announcement being issued in May, after the ARVO Annual Meeting. For FY2019, the Program Committee has elected to use three funding mechanisms: a Focused Translational Team Science Award; an Investigator-Initiated Research Award (with two funding level options, a lower funding level for high-risk/high-reward projects and a higher funding level for more developed projects); and a Translational Research Award.