Small grant, big impact?

Our Small Grants have an excellent track record of delivering impact. They allow researchers to collect preliminary data to make research ideas more competitive when developing larger, follow-on applications in vision research.

This year we have awarded a total of £177,008.93 towards twelve small grants, which can enable researchers to test ideas for research on a small-scale, enabling them to conduct further research into vision loss conditions. Many of these grants are awarded in partnership with other organisations.


This year’s Small Grant recipients:

Please click on the links below to find out more about the conditions this years Small Grants recipients will be researching:

Fight for Sight Small Grants

• Dr Eloise Keeling, University of Southampton: albinism; (treatment)
• Dr Guido Maiello, University of Southampton: Age-related macular degeneration (diagnosis)
• Dr Jessica Rodgers, University of Manchester: Inherited retinal diseases (treatment)
• Dr Nicole Noel, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology: Age-related macular degeneration, inherited retinal diseases (understanding)
• Dr Serene (Siying) Lin, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology: Inherited retinal disease (achromatopsia (diagnosis)

Fight for Sight / Bowman Club Small Grants

• Miss Alice Milligan, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: Corneal and external eye disease (Gonococcal Conjunctivitis; understanding)
• Dr Radhika Patel, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: Corneal and external eye diseases (corneal endothelial injury; understanding)

Fight for Sight / Stargardt’s Connected Small Grants

• Dr Malgorzata Rozanowska, Cardiff University: Age-related macular degeneration, inherited retinal diseases (Stargardt disease; treatment)
• Dr Matteo Rizzi, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology: Age-related macular degeneration, inherited retinal diseases (Stargardt disease; understanding)

Bhavna Tailor, CEO at Stargardt's Connected said: “We are delighted to be partnering with Fight for Sight to co-fund 2 exciting research projects. The work by Dr Malgorzata Rozanowska at Cardiff University could be very significant in providing a practical solution in helping to slow down the progression of the disease. The project by Dr Rizzi at UCL hopes to create a novel mouse model which could be used in developing future treatments for Stargardt’s Disease. We very much look forward to hearing the learnings from both studies.”

Fight for Sight / Thyroid Eye Disease Charitable Trust Small Grant

• Dr Stephanie Hanna, Cardiff University: Thyroid eye disease (diagnosis)

Fight for Sight / Versus Arthritis Small Grant

• Dr Lakshanie Wickramasinghe, University of Oxford: Ocular inflammatory diseases (uveitis; understanding)

"We are proud to partner with Fight for Sight in supporting early career researchers through their Small Grant Awards.These grants will help researchers collect preliminary data, essential for securing larger follow-on funding for critical vision research. Dr Wickramasinghe’s research will provide new insight into the causes and consequences of uveitis. The development of a new human-cell model of the front of the uvea may help the development of more personalised treatments for people with arthritis associated uveitis.”

Fight for Sight / Health and Care Research Wales Small Grant

• Dr Gloria Cimaglia, Cardiff University: Neuro-ophthalmology, Inherited retinal diseases (dominant optic atrophy; treatment)

Two previous award recipients:

Associate Professor Mervyn Thomas

Associate Professor Thomas at the University of Leicester has been awarded three small grants with Fight for Sight. The first, awarded in 2016 was titled ‘lmproving the genetic diagnosis in infantile nystagmus’.

As associate Professor Thomas has told us: “At the start of my clinical academic career, we could only test one gene at a time in the NHS. However, next-generation sequencing technologies were on the horizon (where you could test multiple genes in one go). Utilising this new technology, I recognised the need for a more efficient diagnostic process for infantile nystagmus. This is when I applied for Fight for Sight funding for a small grant of approximately £15,000 in 2016. I was very fortunate to receive this grant, it was a game-changing event for our work.”

The second, awarded in 2018, identified early predictors for visual development in children with infantile nystagmus, titled ‘Predicting future vision in infants and young children with nystagmus using optical coherence tomography and eye movement recordings.’ The third, awarded in 2020, was titled ‘Developing a prototype artificial intelligence-based eye tracker (a-eye) for the diagnosis and monitoring of eye movement disorders.’ Associate Professor Thomas’ work has led to easier diagnosis and prognosis in nystagmus.

Professor Pearse Keane

Based at the UCL Institute of Opthalmology, Professor Keane was awarded a small grant, jointly funded by Fight for Sight and Alzheimer's Research UK, in 2017 for his project titled ‘Detecting Alzheimer's Disease in the Retina - a Data Linkage and Machine Learning Approach (The AlzEye Study)’. This project involved linking over 2 million retinal image sets to corresponding NHS primary care records, and then using machine learning to identify the retinal features associated with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

Professor Keane’s work funded by our small grants award enabled him to go on to conduct further work with Dr Siegfried Wagner, which showed that eye scans can detect neurodegenerative diseases up to seven years earlier than current techniques.

Professor Keane told us, “Fight for Sight was the crucial seed for all this work (and the best is yet to come!)”.

Could you be the next small grant recipient?

If you have research idea that you need to collect pilot data for, please visit this page for more information and guidance.

The funding call for the next round of applications has closed but will open again later in the year.