New and Current Investigators

New and Current Investigators

Many funding opportunities are available for new and established investigators. A few are listed below.

APTA/Foundation for Physical Therapy Federal Opportunities

APTA / Foundation for Physical Therapy

The New Investigator Fellowship
Training Initiative (NIFTI)

This award is designed to fund doctorally prepared physical therapists and physical therapist assistants as developing researchers and to improve their competitiveness in securing external funding for their future research. The Foundation seeks to fund the most highly qualified physical therapists intent upon pursuing a career in research and to ensure the physical therapy profession benefits from the commitment and scholarship of these individuals.

Candidates must have received the required post-professional doctoral degree, or the professional education degree in physical therapy for those already holding a post-professional degree, no earlier than five years prior to the year of application and no later than June 28th of the year of application.

Please see the following Foundation webpage for further details.

Research Grants offered by FPT

The Foundation, like the physical therapy profession, is dedicated to the goal of improving the quality and delivery of patient care. The Foundation accomplishes this by providing support to emerging investigators to promote scientifically based and clinically relevant research related to the effectiveness of physical therapist practice.

The Foundation supports research projects in any specialty. The projects must be intervention studies in which the interventions are provided by physical therapists, or selected components of the interventions are provided by physical therapist assistants under the direction and supervision of physical therapists.

The maximum grant amount is $40,000 (salary, fringe benefits, and direct expenses only). The grant period of performance may be one or two years. No overhead is allowed. Applications are due in mid-August of each year. Awards are made in mid-December.

Please see the FPT Research web site for further details.

APTA web site for Other Research Funding Opportunities

The APTA maintains outstanding web sites that list many Funding Opportunites, Sources of information and a comprehensive list of Foundations and Associations that fund rehabilitation related research.

Federal Opportunities

Many federal organizations provide research grants including the Department of Health and Human Services' National Institutes of Health , National Science Foundation , Department of Education's National Institute for Disability Rehabilitation Research and the Department of Veterans Affairs to name a few. Below are some of the funding opportunities of special interest to new and established physical therapy researchers:

NCMRR Infrastructure Development Sites

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), through the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research (NCMRR), and the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), have funded six grants to build research infrastructure by providing access to expertise, technologies, and resources from allied fields such as neurosciences, engineering, applied behavior, and the social sciences.  Researchers in medical rehabilitation are invited to access these funded core infrastructure sites.  Opportunities facilitated by this R24 funding mechanism include: 

  • Research training       
  • On site sabbaticals
  • Pilot project funding
  • Core services  

NCMRR Cores

R24HD050845
BREGMAN, BARBARA
National Capitol Area Rehabilitation Research Network
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

R24HD050846
HOFFMAN, ERIC P
Integrated Molecular Core for Rehabilitation Medicine
CHILDREN'S NATIONAL MEDICAL CENTER

R24HD050837
LIEBER, RICHARD L
National Center for Muscle Rehabilitation Research
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO

R24HD050821
RYMER, WILLIAM Z
Engineering for Neurologic Rehabilitation
REHABILITATION INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

R24HD050838
SELZER, MICHAEL
Center for Experimental Neurorehabilitation Training
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

R24HD050836
WHYTE, JOHN
Research methods for Cognitive Rehabilitation
MOSS REHABILITATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE

The Section would like to extend a special thanks to all of the partnering organizations that have joined in to make the organization an invaluable resource for information, tools, and support for the population we serve.