Clinical researchers working to improve how burn care is delivered in military operational environments can receive substantial support through the FY2026 Military Burn Research Program Patient-Centered Research Award.

The award is designed to close the gap between discoveries in burn science and what clinicians can realistically deliver in austere, resource-limited settings.

Standard projects can receive up to $1.6 million, while projects using the programme’s Mentorship Option can receive up to $1.8 million.

The maximum project period is four years.

The FY26 pre-application deadline has already passed, so the October 21 full-application deadline is only available to previously invited applicants.

What Does the Programme Fund?

This award focuses specifically on clinical research and clinical trials.

Projects may investigate how interventions, guidelines, technologies, clinical practices and policies can be deployed effectively for burn patients under difficult operational conditions.

Research may be:

• Prospective;
• Retrospective;
• Interventional;
• Observational.

The project must involve human subjects or human-subject data.

What Research Is Not Allowed?

Preclinical and animal research cannot be supported through this mechanism.

Researchers with product-development or preclinical projects should instead consider whether another Military Burn Research Program mechanism is more appropriate.

Why Patient-Centered Research?

Military burn care often occurs far from specialist hospitals.

A treatment may work well inside a sophisticated burn center but be difficult to deploy during prolonged field care.

This programme asks a practical question:

How can burn-care evidence actually improve real patient outcomes at the point of need?

Projects should therefore connect scientific quality with real-world implementation.

Mentorship Option

FY26 introduced a Mentorship Option.

This allows an experienced researcher to work with one or two junior researchers while conducting the primary research project.

The objective is both to address an important burn-care gap and strengthen the future military burn research workforce.

The Mentorship Option receives a higher funding ceiling.

How Much Funding Is Available?

Standard award: Up to $1.6 million total costs

Mentorship Option: Up to $1.8 million total costs

Maximum project period: 4 years

CDMRP expects approximately $3.4 million to support about two awards.

Who Can Apply?

Organisational eligibility is broad and can include qualifying:

• Universities;
• Research institutions;
• Hospitals;
• Nonprofits;
• For-profit companies;
• Government organisations;
• International research organisations.

Applicants must satisfy the investigator and organisational requirements in the full federal announcement.

What Makes a Competitive Application?

The proposal should demonstrate both clinical importance and operational relevance.

Explain:

• Current burn-care problem;
• Target patient population;
• Proposed clinical approach;
• Research design;
• Statistical plan;
• Why the findings will change care;
• How the approach works in austere settings.

Projects should avoid designing studies that are clinically interesting but impossible to translate into distributed military care.

Current Status

Pre-application: Closed July 7, 2026.

Invitations issued: August 26, 2026.

Full application deadline: October 21, 2026 at 11:59pm ET.

Who can submit now: Only applicants that completed the required pre-application process and were invited.

Apply Here: Military Burn Patient-Centered Research Award application portal

New researchers should monitor the next Military Burn Research Program cycle rather than treating October 21 as an open first-stage deadline.