Grants Database
Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB) provides grants to high-performing U.S.-based departments of ophthalmology and to their high-potential investigators. Use our Grants Database to learn more. Award amounts for some grants are distributed over multiple years.
How to use the Grants Database
Refine your search by using the filter at left. Search by setting a date range, or filter your results by institution, research area keyword, or awardee. Sort the table by clicking on any column header.
Learn about an institution or individual by clicking on a name.
Learn about RPB-supported work by clicking on the text link "Research funded by this award," which will take you to our Research Database where you can refine and/or expand a search for published studies. (Note: In some cases this link will not be available because a researcher may have only recently received an award and has yet to publish findings.)
RPB Grant Awards from 2021 & 2022
45 Awards ($9,155,000)
| RPB Grant Type |
Year |
Award |
Research Area |
Awardee |
Institution |
| Career Development Award | 2022 | $350,000 | Retina | Hyde, Robert A. / MD, PhD | University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine |
| Will study retinitis pigmentosa (RP)—one of the most common, and blinding, inherited retinal degenerations—to examine how the cells that transmit visual information to the brain, which are in close proximity to the RP-affected light-sensitive cells, change as the disease progresses. | |||||
| Career Development Award | 2022 | $350,000 | Glaucoma, Visual Neuroscience | Liu, Wendy / MD, PhD | Stanford University School of Medicine |
| Will explore the role of specific genes in sensing intraocular pressure (a known risk factor for glaucoma) and mediating retinal ganglion cells, the cells that are lost during the course of glaucoma. | |||||
| Career Development Award | 2022 | $350,000 | Cornea, Pharmacology, Physiology | Pasricha, Neel / MD | University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine |
| Will advance novel therapeutics for dry eye disease—a common and sometimes painful disease of the ocular surface—by promoting tear fluid secretion by targeting ion transport proteins on epithelial cells lining the ocular surface. | |||||
| Career Development Award | 2022 | $350,000 | Glaucoma, Immunology, Molecular Biology | Prasov, Lev / MD, PhD | The Regents of the University of Michigan School of Medicine |
| Will study a specific gene, identified by studying a rare genetic disorder, that leads to glaucoma (as well as skin, blood vessel and joint disease) when the gene is altered. | |||||
| Disney Award for Amblyopia Research | 2022 | $100,000 | Amblyopia, Neuro-Ophthalmology, Physiological Optics, Strabismus, Visual Psychophysics | Li, Roger Wing-Hong / BSC (Optom), PhD | Nova Southeastern University |
| Will build upon the researcher’s previous work developing a novel binocular treatment for adult patients with amblyopia (commonly called lazy eye) using three-dimensional (3D) video games; the researcher will now focus on establishing a protocol for treating children with amblyopia. | |||||
| Low Vision Research Award | 2022 | $300,000 | Eye Movements, Neuro-Ophthalmology, Physiological Optics, Visual Psychophysics | Dagnelie, Gislin / PhD | Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine |
| Stroke patients can lose vision in the left or right half of the visual field, in either eye; this research will provide new knowledge about the mechanisms of visual adaptation in patients who lost vision in this manner. | |||||
| Medical Student Eye Research Fellowship | 2022 | $30,000 | Clinical, Cornea, Epidemiologic | Cao, Binh | University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine |
| Conducting research at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. | |||||
| Medical Student Eye Research Fellowship | 2022 | $30,000 | Retina, Retinal Cell Biology | Diaz-Aguilar, Monica Sophia | Stanford University School of Medicine |
| Conducting research at Stanford University School of Medicine. | |||||
| Medical Student Eye Research Fellowship | 2022 | $30,000 | Retina | Lohss, Maxwell B. | University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine |
| Conducting research at the University of Pittsburgh. | |||||
| Special Grant | 2022 | $125,000 | Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology | ||
| AUPO is a key ally in RPB's commitment to enrich the development of the Chairs, Directors of Research, and other leaders from departments of ophthalmology. | |||||
| Special Grant | 2022 | $280,000 | American Academy of Ophthalmology | ||
| Award given in partnership with the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO). Designed to enable researchers to use AAO’s IRIS Registry—the nation’s first and largest comprehensive eye disease clinical registry—to conduct population-based studies in ophthalmology and blindness prevention. | |||||
| Stein Innovation Award | 2022 | $300,000 | Cornea | de Paiva, Cintia S. / MD, PhD | Baylor College of Medicine |
| Will investigate specific receptors for cytokines (chemical messengers that take information between cells) located in the corneal epithelium to determine if they are functional and, if so, if they promote corneal health. | |||||
| Career Advancement Award | 2021 | $150,000 | Retinal Cell Biology | Rao, Rajesh C. / MD | The Regents of the University of Michigan School of Medicine |
| Will investigate the role of specific gene (METTL3)-driven pathways in retinal development by investigating their ability to modify ribonucleic acid (RNA) as well as control gene expression during pluripotent stem cell (PSC) retinal differentiation. | |||||
| Career Advancement Award | 2021 | $150,000 | Immunology, Microbiology, Retina, Retinal Cell Biology | Schallek, Jesse / PhD | University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry |
| Will image and identify specific kinds of immune cells inside the living eye for the first time using a state-of-the-art eye camera developed in the researcher’s lab, combined with time-lapse imaging. | |||||
| Career Advancement Award | 2021 | $150,000 | Visual Neuroscience | Van Hook, Matthew / PhD | University of Nebraska Medical Center |
| Will test the hypothesis that microglia, the immune cells of the central nervous system, are responsible for degeneration of retinal ganglion cell (RGC) outputs to the brain in glaucoma. | |||||
| Career Development Award | 2021 | $350,000 | Retina | Liu, Tin Yan Alvin / MD | Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine |
| Will use deep learning techniques, a form of artificial intelligence, in optical coherence tomography (OCT) analysis to improve management of patients with age-related macular degeneration. | |||||
| Career Development Award | 2021 | $350,000 | Retina, Retinal Cell Biology, Visual Neuroscience | Peng, Yi-Rong / PhD | University of California, Los Angeles |
| Will decipher how cells become specialized in an area of the human retina called the fovea, which enables highly detailed, “high-acuity,” vision that is essential for reading, driving and recognizing faces. | |||||
| Career Development Award | 2021 | $350,000 | Retina | Ruzycki, Philip / PhD | Washington University in Saint Louis School of Medicine |
| Will further his previous research on retinal cells (which have neurons that cannot be regenerated and the loss of which is associated with major eye diseases like age-related macular degeneration), which discovered that these cells utilize a novel feedback loop to link cell metabolism with gene expression. | |||||
| Career Development Award | 2021 | $350,000 | Glaucoma | Zebardast, Nazlee / MD, MSc | Harvard Medical School |
| Will use cutting-edge statistical genetics and machine learning approaches to assess the influence of background genetic risk on glaucoma progression. | |||||
| Catalyst Award for Innovative Research Approaches for Age-Related Macular Degeneration | 2021 | $300,000 | AMD | Zhang, Yuhua / PhD | University of California, Los Angeles |
| Will develop advanced retinal imaging technology and objective functional biomarkers for assessing risk for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) progression. | |||||
| Medical Student Eye Research Fellowship | 2021 | $30,000 | Clinical, Epidemiologic, Glaucoma | Delavar, Arash / MPH | University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine |
| Conduction research at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. | |||||
| Medical Student Eye Research Fellowship | 2021 | $30,000 | Neurodegeneration, Retina | Pant, Praruj | Duke University School of Medicine |
| Conducting Research at Duke University School of Medicine. | |||||
| Medical Student Eye Research Fellowship | 2021 | $30,000 | Glaucoma | Saleem, Meher | University of Miami Miller School of Medicine |
| Conducting research at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. | |||||
| Physician-Scientist Award | 2021 | $300,000 | Clinical, Cornea, Epidemiologic, Immunology, Microbiology | Doan, Thuy / MD, PhD | University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine |
| Will determine if metagenomic deep sequencing (MDS), a previously developed technology for correctly diagnosing eye infection and inflammation, improves clinical outcomes for patients with eye infections. | |||||
| Physician-Scientist Award | 2021 | $300,000 | Glaucoma | Newman-Casey, Paula Anne / MD, MS | The Regents of the University of Michigan School of Medicine |
| Will aim to lessen the rate of prescription eye drop non-compliance for glaucoma patients (currently affecting 40% of glaucoma patients) by quantitatively measuring whether drops are successfully instilled, monitoring medication use, communicating usage data to the patient’s health care team, and coaching patients on improving their eye drop medication success. | |||||
| Physician-Scientist Award | 2021 | $150,000 | Anatomy, Ocular Oncology, Pathology | Rajaii, Fatemeh / MD, PhD | Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine |
| Will develop a therapy, an injectable IGF-1R inhibitor, for thyroid eye disease (TED) to inhibit the development of fat and muscle cells in orbital fibroblasts, which plays a role in TED development according to prior research. | |||||
| RPB International Research Collaborators Award | 2021 | $75,000 | Retinal Cell Biology | DeVries, Steven H. / MD, PhD | Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine |
| Will establish a rubric for evaluating cone photoreceptors in 3D retinal organoids with respect to the maturity and/or deficits in their synaptic connections and potentially identify ways to improve those connections. | |||||
| Special Grant | 2021 | $60,000 | The Heed Ophthalmic Foundation | ||
| Funding well-qualified under-represented minority (URM) candidates in academic ophthalmology in The Heed Fellowship Program. | |||||
| Special Grant | 2021 | $100,000 | National Academy of Sciences | ||
| Funding an initiative focusing on the global myopia pandemic. | |||||
| Stein Innovation Award | 2021 | $300,000 | Cell Biology, Development, Retinal Cell Biology | Daneman, Richard / PhD | University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine |
| Will utilize a novel mouse model of retinal fibrosis (a condition that can develop after retinal neovascular disorders are treated with VEGF therapies) to understand the cellular and molecular origin of retinal fibrosis. | |||||
| Stein Innovation Award | 2021 | $300,000 | Cell Biology, Development | Kolodkin, Alex L. / PhD | Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine |
| Will conduct research to understand how the visual system perceives motion, and how certain genetic mutations in people may affect this function. | |||||
| Career Development Award | 2021 | $350,000 | Clinical, Epidemiologic, Retina | Cai, Cindy X. / MD | Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine |
| Will use statistical modeling to predict lapses in diabetic retinopathy (DR) care based on social determinants of health (including both patient and healthcare system factors). | |||||
| Career Development Award | 2021 | $350,000 | Retina, Retinal Cell Biology | Kim, Tyson N. / MD, PhD | University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine |
| Will explore the developmental and molecular mechanisms of chorioretinal anastomoses (abnormal connections between retinal and choroidal circulation) in neovascular age-related macular degeneration, which is a disease that responds poorly to gold-standard anti-VEGF treatments and is a leading cause of blindness. | |||||
| Career Development Award | 2021 | $350,000 | AMD | Ratnapriya, Rinki / PhD | Baylor College of Medicine |
| Will apply genomic approaches to characterize age-related macular degeneration (AMD) risk variants that were identified via previous genome-wide association studies. | |||||
| Disney Award for Amblyopia Research | 2021 | $100,000 | Visual Neuroscience | Bear, Mark F. / PhD | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Will undertake a pilot animal trial to assess the safety and efficacy of injecting tedrodotoxin (TTX), a nerve poison, into the “normal” eye to block activity and thereby allow development of the amblyopic eye through increased usage. | |||||
| Disney Award for Amblyopia Research | 2021 | $100,000 | Amblyopia, Neuro-Ophthalmology, Strabismus | Roberts, Tawna / OD, PhD | Stanford University School of Medicine |
| Will study the development of amblyopia in children, probing both early, lower processing (edge detection) and higher-level cortical processing (motion discrimination), to examine how defects in higher-level vision depend on lower-level defects. | |||||
| Low Vision Research Award | 2021 | $300,000 | Low Vision | Woods, Russell L. / PhD, BOptom | Harvard Medical School |
| Will study the ability of some people with central visual impairments to use other areas of their retina for visual analysis. | |||||
| Medical Student Eye Research Fellowship | 2021 | $30,000 | Anatomy, Ocular Oncology, Pathology | Kaler, Christopher | University of Miami Miller School of Medicine |
| Conducting research at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. | |||||
| Medical Student Eye Research Fellowship | 2021 | $30,000 | Clinical, Epidemiologic, Retina | Richardson, Quintin | University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine |
| Conducting research at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. | |||||
| Medical Student Eye Research Fellowship | 2021 | $30,000 | Retinal Cell Biology | Singuri, Srinidhi | Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of CWRU |
| Conducting research at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. | |||||
| Special Grant | 2021 | $20,000 | Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology | ||
| Continuation support of the EyeFind Research Grant Program. | |||||
| Special Grant | 2021 | $175,000 | Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology | ||
| AUPO is a key ally in RPB's commitment to enrich the development of the Chairs, Directors of Research, and other leaders from departments of ophthalmology. | |||||
| Stein Innovation Award | 2021 | $300,000 | Biochemistry, Molecular Biology | Chen, Shiming / PhD | Washington University in Saint Louis School of Medicine |
| Proposes to create a mechanism to track Caspases-3/7 cells, which are involved in the cellular death cycle that gets activated during retinal degeneration, a leading cause of blindness with no cure. | |||||
| Stein Innovation Award | 2021 | $300,000 | Glaucoma | Sigal, Ian A. / PhD | University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine |
| Will develop a novel therapeutic approach to glaucoma based on altering the mechanical properties of the lamina cribrosa, a structure of the eye where retinal ganglion cell axons, which carry visual information to the brain, exit the eye. | |||||
| Stein Innovation Award | 2021 | $300,000 | Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Pharmacology, Physiology | Travis, Gabriel H. / MD | David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles |
| Will create a new zebrafish model for Stargardt disease, the most commonly inherited single-gene retinal disease, in order to assess the role of the gene’s encoded protein on photoreceptor function, which is essential for sight. | |||||
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