DENVER—Envision, a low-vision advocacy organization, will hold a competition at its upcoming 2015 Conference, to be held here Sept. 9 to 12, 2015, in which participants will vie for a grant of up to $10,000. At the conclusion of the conference, from 10 am to noon on Saturday, Sept. 12, Envision will hold a workshop on how to design a critical research project and get it funded by developing a successful research proposal. The Envision Research Institute will award a seed-funding grant of up to $10,000 to the winning proposal.

Examples of winning proposals and projects will be drawn from sessions throughout the four-day program. Every research track at Envision Conference 2015 will include time for discussion of the session topics, how research can be applied to rehabilitative care and what remaining questions need to be addressed with ongoing research. Care providers and researchers will be encouraged throughout the conference to form teams to collaborate on small research projects and proposals. Each group will then be invited to submit a letter of intent to participate in the research competition, which the Envision Research Institute team will critique, offering each group feedback to develop a full research proposal.

Completed proposals submitted by Oct.15, 2015, will be judged by the Envision Research Institute team based on their innovation, feasibility, team strengths and anticipated impact on the practice of low vision rehabilitation. One group will be selected to carry out its proposed project through the Envision Research Institute and will enter into an agreement for Envision to fund its proposed project and negotiate terms for ownership of the research results. “We want to encourage and facilitate open discussions that lead to critical research collaborations,” said Laura Walker, PhD, executive director of the Envision Research Institute. “Our goal with this competition is to accelerate and sponsor promising new research directions that will have a direct impact on the practice of low vision rehabilitation.”