Project Grant H7M42253

This Project Grant award of $393,175.00 from the National Eye Institute (CFDA 93.867 - Vision Research) is supporting the implementation and evaluation of instrument-based vision screening in primary care pediatric offices affiliated with Akron Children's Hospital. The goal is to enhance early detection of sight-threatening disorders in young children (ages 3-5) within the hospital's service area. Since the project's implementation in April 2021, the awardee has demonstrated a significant...

This $778,398 National Institute of Mental Health project grant will fund research at the University of California, San Diego to test the accuracy of eye tracking as an early screening tool for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the general pediatric population. The research aims to screen approximately 8,000 toddlers ages 12-24 months attending well-baby checkups over the five-year period from May 2023 to March 2028. Researchers will use eye tracking technology to measure social attention...

This $745,607 Project Grant award from the National Eye Institute (CFDA 93.867 Vision Research) supports the development of the RETIVUE ENTIREEYE, a handheld, high-resolution, non-contact, single-image, widefield retinal screening camera for premature and healthy newborn babies. The device utilizes a novel all-digital, no moving parts scanning light module to capture a seamless, high-quality, diagnostic ultra-widefield image of the entire baby eye in a single shot. This technology has the...

The National Eye Institute (NEI) awarded a $479,417 Project Grant under the Vision Research federal grant program (CFDA 93.867) to the University of Florida to conduct a longitudinal study on the development of infant visuocortical function and its relationship to cognitive outcomes. The 5-year project aims to: Characterize infant visuocortical function and developmental trajectories using measures such as visual evoked potentials, steady-state visual evoked potentials, electroencephalography,...

The National Eye Institute (NEI) awarded a $295,766 Project Grant (CFDA 93.867 - Vision Research) to Ther-Ai LLC, located in Oviedo, FL, to develop a smartphone application called ILIGN. The goal of this project is to create a rapid, non-invasive, and accurate artificial intelligence-driven system to pre-screen for ocular misalignment (strabismus), a leading cause of preventable blindness in children. The expected outcome is a software platform that allows untrained end-users to diagnose...

This Project Grant award of $168,053 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) under the Child Health and Human Development Extramural Research Federal Grant Program (CFDA 93.865) supports research to quantify improvements in visual acuity, adaptive behavior, and social responsiveness in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) following refractive surgery. The key objectives of the research are to 1) further define the role of visual morbidity in ASD...

This Project Grant award of $638,837, provided by the National Eye Institute under the Vision Research federal grant program (CFDA 93.867), aims to (1) develop an early screening algorithm for the detection of cerebral visual impairment (CVI) in infants and (2) establish neurodevelopmental profiles to inform interventions for young children diagnosed with CVI. The research is being conducted by the Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. The overarching goal is to enable early...

The federal Project Grant award R21EY036536 was provided by the National Eye Institute (CFDA 93.867 Vision Research program) to the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) to conduct a pilot study on using amber light exposure to slow myopia progression and axial eye elongation in children. The $816,750 award will fund a 2-year study to determine the efficacy of having myopic children wear amber-tinted contact lenses for up to 4 hours per day. The study aims to test the hypothesis that...

The National Eye Institute (NEI) awarded a $437,959 Project Grant to Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) under the NEI's Vision Research federal grant program (CFDA 93.867) to develop, evaluate, and validate large language models (LLMs) for studying amblyopia treatment, adherence, and outcomes using real-world electronic health record (EHR) data. The project aims to enable more research on amblyopia, a common pediatric eye problem, as well as the development of clinical decision...

The National Eye Institute (NEI) awarded a $4,539,043 Cooperative Agreement to The Ohio State University on September 15, 2025 under the Vision Research federal grant program (CFDA 93.867). The award will fund a multicenter (14 clinic centers) randomized clinical trial of 606 children ages 6 to 11 to compare the effectiveness of 0.05% atropine versus a placebo in delaying the onset of nearsightedness (myopia). The key objectives are to determine whether atropine delays myopia onset and slows...