Research to Prevent Blindness’ mission and leadership makes the eyecare of today—and tomorrow—possible.
For decades, RPB grants have provided funding to create new discoveries in vision science. Learn about our current grants, as well as our exceptional grantees.
What do we know about common eye diseases? Find out here, in RPB’s new Learning Center for patients and families.
Visit our Media Center for timely updates—in text and video formats—on emerging research and vision science news.
Your support makes our vision-saving work possible! There are many ways to engage with RPB.
Dry eye is a chronic medical condition that develops when the eye's tear film does not lubricate and protect the eye's outer surface.
RPB Stein Innovation Awards provide funds to vision researchers with a goal of understanding the visual system and the diseases that compromise its function. These awards are intended to provide seed money to proposed high-risk / high-gain vision science research which is innovative, cutting-edge, and demonstrates out-of-the-box thinking.
RPB offers two types of awards, a Stein Innovation Award inside ophthalmology and a Stein Innovation Award outside ophthalmology, depending on the primary appointment of faculty applying for this award:
The Stein Innovation Awards are not to serve as venture philanthropy for start-up companies. The application should also not be a natural extension of the candidate’s research progress to date; it should catalyze a new line of inquiry or otherwise show a departure from previously funded research. The proposed research in the application should provide a clear and rational research plan, compelling preliminary data, and careful consideration of pitfalls, which should be addressed in the candidate’s scientific statement. Additionally, the application should be substantially different than an R01-type research endeavor. The proposed research should be something that federal funders are not apt to finance due to its unconventional and novel reasoning.
Candidates in either cycle must be either MDs, PhDs, MD/PhDs or equivalent doctoral degree with an academic position of Associate Professor through full Professor. Candidates must provide not less than 5% effort for the proposed research.
Department chairs (including interim or acting chairs) can nominate multiple candidates per department per school. Though multiple candidates can be nominated, only one award per department can be approved.
Applicants must be nominated by their Department Chair. Please note: applications received without a prior nomination form will not be accepted. Candidates can access the nomination and application forms below.
Each RPB grant has different eligibility criteria, which is detailed on the relevant grant webpage. If you have questions about the eligibility details, please reach out to us; we’re happy to help.
While a few of our RPB individual awards (RPB Medical Student Eye Research Fellowship, RPB Career Development Award, and the RPB Physician-Scientist Award) are restricted to departments that have an RPB Unrestricted or Challenge grant, the majority of our awards are open to researchers at any academic medical center in the U.S.
The reason that the three awards mentioned above are restricted to RPB-supported departments is that our Departmental Grantees undergo an extremely rigorous peer-review process. The environment and leadership at these departments have met our stringent criteria and are appropriate venues for the research being conducted by these early- and mid-career researchers, giving us assurance that they will receive outstanding support and mentorship.
If you are not sure if your department has a Departmental Grant, visit our current grantees here.
No, all of our grants are awarded to researchers or departments of ophthalmology at U.S.-based academic medical centers. The RPB International Researcher Collaborators Award supports collaboration between U.S. and outside-the-U.S. researchers; however, the award is made to the U.S. academic medical center, which can then disperse the funds as needed to support the project collaboration.
For Financial Reports and Progress Reports, please contact Director of Grants Management MariaClaudia Lora-Montana (mlora@rpbusa.org).
For Year-End Reports (photos, research summaries and bibliographies), please contact Jo Casella (jcasella@rpbusa.org).
For more information about all RPB grant requirements, visit our helpful RPB Reports page.
We love to help promote our grantees’ work! Please reach out to Director of External Affairs Diana Friedman (dfriedman@rpbusa.org or 646-892-9565) to share your good news.
Contact us for more details!
MariaClaudia Lora-Montano
Director of Grants Management