New and Current Investigators
Many funding opportunities are available for new and established investigators. A few are listed below.
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 Foundation for Physical Therapy web site for further details.
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:
- NIH New Investigators Program
- NIH Academic Career Award (K07)
- NIH Supplements To Promote Reentry Into Biomedical And Behavioral Research Careers
- NIH Research Supplements to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research
- Grants.gov
- VA Career Development Program
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
For additional information on NCMRR funding opportunities, please see the NCMRR website.