Grant Applications & Information

Click the tab below for our latest applications and information on our grant programs.

Exfoliation Syndrome and Exfoliation Glaucoma, Pressure Independent Mechanisms of Glaucoma, Neuroprotection, and the Genetics of Glaucomas that affect people under the age of 40

The Glaucoma Foundation offers grants to researchers striving to improve the lives of glaucoma patients through novel innovations and scientific advances. The areas of current focus for TGF’s Grant Research program are Exfoliation Syndrome and Exfoliation Glaucoma, Pressure Independent Mechanisms of Glaucoma, Neuroprotection, and Genetics of Glaucomas that affect people under the age of 40 years. Examples of research that may be considered range from basic science to clinical interventions, such as genetics and genomic medicine, disease modeling, assessment of ocular perfusion, artificial intelligence, and clinical research. The deadline for grant applications is March 1, 2024.  A priority will be given to novel proposals with a viable study hypothesis leading to impactful results that are fundable at the NIH level. Initial grant funding for one year is for up to $75,000; a grantee is permitted to apply for a grant renewal of up to $75,000. A renewal grant is a one-year grant based on research findings from the initial research.


March 2024 Grant Application

 

A.    Please read through the application carefully and include all the required information. There are five parts to this application:

  1. A Summary and Information Sheet
  2. A Supplemental Information Section
  3. A Budget Form and Other Funding Portion
  4. A Project Description
  5. A Biographical Sketch.

Please make sure each section is complete.

B.  Submit a PDF of your application to asteele@glaucomafoundation.org by Friday, March 1, 2024. The email should be titled “TGF Grant Application” with the PDF application attached to the email.

C. Submit one original and three copies of the completed application and the related appendices. The hard copy applications must be in our office by Monday, March 4, 2024, 5:00 p.m. EST.

D. Mail/Email applications to:

Andrea Steele
Director of Operations
The Glaucoma Foundation
80 Maiden Lane, Suite 700
New York, NY 10038
asteele@glaucomafoundation.org

For technical questions, please contact:

Louis Pasquale, MD, FARVOShelley and Steven Einhorn Distinguished Professor of OphthalmologySite Chair, Department of Ophthalmology,Mount Sinai Hospital Vice Chair, Translational Ophthalmology ResearchMount Sinai Healthcare Systemlouis.pasquale@mssm.edu

Grants will be awarded in summer 2024.

Terms and Restrictions

A.   Grants are awarded for a one-year period and are renewable.

B.  Applicants must clearly demonstrate the Principal Investigator’s understanding of glaucoma or his/her collaboration with an investigator who has experience in glaucoma research. If collaboration is warranted, a letter of support from the researcher must be included in the application.

C.   Applicants must have a full time faculty position or equivalent.

D.  Initial grant funding for one year is limited to a maximum of $75,000. The Principal Investigator may apply for a renewal for up to $75,000. Renewal grants are for an additional year of research and must be based on findings from the first year’s work.

E.  The Glaucoma Foundation does not provide funds for investigator salaries, travel, overhead, or other indirect costs.  However, technician salaries are eligible.

F.  No page limit is prescribed. It is left to the applicant to determine the amount of pages necessary to make the proposal convincing without being excessive. Minimum font size is 11-point font.

G.  Excluding renewal grants, Principal Investigators are required to wait a minimum of two years from the funded cycle before submitting a new research application for consideration.

H.  Renewal grant applications are accepted after 18 months have elapsed from the beginning of an original grant award.

Previous Grant Applications

The TGF (sponsored by Patricia Hill) / RPB Fellowships in Glaucoma

The Glaucoma Foundation and Research to Prevent Blindness have partnered to provide five fellowships in 2023 to increase innovation and diversity in glaucoma research.

The Glaucoma Foundation (TGF) and Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB) have partnered to launch a grant aimed at supporting under-represented racial and ethnic minority researchers in the pursuit of glaucoma research. The TGF (sponsored by Patricia Hill) / RPB Fellowships in Glaucoma provide one-year, $10,000 fellowships focused on substantive glaucoma research, including investigation into the etiology, diagnosis and/or treatment of glaucoma, to current ophthalmology fellows with an MD, MD/PhD, PhD or other relevant degree.

CLICK HERE TO APPLY

Submissions must be received on or before September 15, 2023

“TGF is delighted to be partnering with Research to Prevent Blindness on these timely initiatives to bring greater diversity into the field of glaucoma research – an important step in reducing disparities in vision care,” said Elena Sturman, President and CEO, The Glaucoma Foundation. “Combining our resources will help to accelerate our efforts – to bring greater awareness to glaucoma, to preserve vision, and to find a cure.”

Glaucoma, a group of eye diseases that cause damage to the primary conduit between the eye and the brain—the optic nerve—can lead to vision loss or blindness. Risk factors for glaucoma include being over the age of 60; being of African American or Hispanic/Latino heritage and over age 40; and having a family history of the disease.

At the start of the disease process, glaucoma is often asymptomatic, however, early detection and treatment of glaucoma is key to maintaining vision. Treatments can help protect the optic nerve and extend vision, however, there is currently no cure for glaucoma or its associated vision loss. For this reason, TGF and RPB are joining forces to support researchers who are dedicated to generating new knowledge in the glaucoma space.

“Each mind that gets turned onto glaucoma research is like a candle that sheds light on this disease. We need candles of all types and from all places to cast off the darkness caused by glaucoma,” said Louis Pasquale, MD, FARVO, TGF Scientific Board Co-Chairman; Site Chair, Department of Ophthalmology, Mount Sinai Hospital; and Director, Eye and Vision Research Institute, New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai.

“We look forward to an excellent slate of applicants for these exciting Fellowships that will move the needle on glaucoma research while supporting a healthy and diverse research ecosystem – two critical goals worth championing,” said Brian Hofland, PhD, President of Research to Prevent Blindness. For more information, visit The Glaucoma Foundation’s application page.


About The Glaucoma Foundation

The Glaucoma Foundation is dedicated to improving the lives of people with glaucoma. The Foundation works to encourage and support basic and applied research in glaucoma with a goal of preserving and restoring vision. We strive to be an important resource to help patients, their families, and at-risk individuals to manage their glaucoma through education and outreach.

About Research to Prevent Blindness

The mission of Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB) is to preserve and restore vision by supporting research to develop treatments, preventives and cures for all conditions that damage and destroy sight. Since it was founded 60 years ago, in 1960, RPB has channeled more than $383 million into eye research. As a result, RPB has been identified with nearly every major breakthrough in vision research in that time. Learn more at www.rpbusa.org.

CLICK HERE TO APPLY

Submissions must be received on or before September 15, 2023

Forecasting Glaucoma Disease Progression with Artificial Intelligence

MAJOR GAPS IN GLAUCOMA CARE: We currently have no way to forecast glaucoma disease progression or make predictions about whether patients will require incisional surgery or be blinded by glaucoma. Also, decisions about target IOP are arbitrary and based on clinical consideration of patient age, amount of baseline damage, and baseline IOP.

The Glaucoma Foundation (TGF) is requesting applications that address these gaps using artificial intelligence strategies. Successful applications will be supported at the level of up to $250,000 USD over a two-year period. No indirect funds are allowed. TGF wants to focus on applications that forecast outcomes rather than provide alternative monitoring strategies. Also, while a great deal of interest has been placed on using AI to use images to predict a surrogate outcome, a successful application is one that will forecast an outcome and ultimately impact patient care. The research team must be willing to share the algorithm freely. This would not involve sharing individual-level patient data. The most competitive application will be one that could lead to a randomized clinical trial of AI-guided versus usual care in the management of glaucoma, although that will not be the objective of this RFA.

DELIVERABLE: The application should define an algorithm that will forecast a clinically relevant glaucoma outcome over a specified time period. Algorithms directed at longer forecasts will be given higher priority. Algorithms that do not require interim data inputs are desirable as such algorithms are truly providing a long-range forecast.

OVERALL APPROACH CONSIDERATIONS: Appropriate applications will consider the type of patients under consideration, appropriate input images and co-labels, the computer learning strategy or strategies used, the desired outcome, sample sizes for training, validation, and testing datasets. Applications will describe their research team and describe the potential generalizability of their algorithm(s).

ALGORITHM IMPACT ON GLAUCOMA CARE:  The application will describe how the algorithm will impact glaucoma care and articulate how the algorithm could set the stage for a future randomized clinical trial of usual care versus AI-guided forecasting enhanced care, if possible. The application should estimate how many patients will be impacted by the algorithm and describe measures that will be taken to maintain the algorithm and check for ongoing robust results after its development.

The application should describe specific aims, provide a background of the problem it wants to solve, offer detailed methodology, review preliminary data, and describe anticipated results. A timeline for achieving the project objectives along with a detailed budget should be provided. It is expected that the study team will demonstrate the capability to assemble the appropriate datasets quickly and initial funds will be released when there is evidence that the algorithm has achieved a precision rate of at least 80%. The preliminary version of the algorithm may be reviewed to determine its functionality. The final installment of funds is released when the team has demonstrated 80% precision on a held-out external dataset, although 90+% precision is the ultimate goal.

FUNDING: A grant of up to $100,000 will be payable in the first year. Contingent on a satisfactory report, an additional grant of up to $100,000 will be made in the second year. $50,000 will be given on publication to a peer-reviewed journal.

Artificial Intelligence Grant Application

Application Instructions

A.    Please read through the application carefully and include all the required information. There are five parts to this application:

  1. A Summary and Information Sheet
  2. A Supplemental Information Section
  3. A Budget Form and Other Funding Portion
  4. A Project Description
  5. A Biographical Sketch.

Please make sure each section is complete.

B.  Submit a PDF of your application to asteele@glaucomafoundation.org by Friday, September 10, 2021. The email should be titled “Artificial Intelligence Grant Application” with the PDF application attached to the email.

C. Submit one original and three copies of the completed application and the related appendices. The hard copy applications must be in our office by Monday, September 13, 2021, 5:00 p.m. EST.

D. Mail/Email applications to:

Andrea Steele
Director of Operations
The Glaucoma Foundation
80 Maiden Lane, Suite 700
New York, NY 10038
asteele@glaucomafoundation.org

For technical questions, please contact:

Robert Ritch, MD
Medical Director, Vice President, Secretary and Founder, TGF
Professor and Chief, Glaucoma Service
The New York Eye & Ear Infirmary
ritchmd@glaucoma.net

Grants will be awarded in winter 2021.

Terms and Restrictions

A. Grants are awarded for a two-year period subject to review after year one.

B.  Applicants must clearly demonstrate the Principal Investigator’s understanding of glaucoma or his/her collaboration with an investigator who has experience in glaucoma research. If collaboration is warranted, a letter of support from the researcher must be included in the application.

C.   Applicants must have a full time faculty position or equivalent.

D.  Initial grant funding for a one-year period is limited to a maximum of $100,000. The Principal Investigator may apply for a renewal for up to $100,000. Renewal grants are for an additional year’s research and must be based upon findings from the first year’s A grant of $50,000 will be made upon publication to a peer-reviewed journal.

E.  The Glaucoma Foundation does not provide funds for investigator salaries, travel, overhead, or other indirect costs.  However, technician salaries are eligible.

F.  No page limit is prescribed. It is left to the applicant to determine the number of pages necessary to make the proposal convincing without being excessive. Minimum font size is 11-point font.

TGF-RPB Fellowships in Glaucoma