Program Office: National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR)

CFDA Number: 84.133P
Program Type: Discretionary/Competitive Grants
Also Known As: Research Training Grants, RTG, formerly known as Research Training and Career Development

• Program Description
• Types of Projects
• Additional Information

The Advanced Rehabilitation Research Training (ARRT) program provides advanced rehabilitation research training for persons with clinical or other experience, who may be lacking certain formal multidisciplinary research training needed to improve rehabilitation research methods and outcomes for individuals with disabilities.

Grants are made to institutions to recruit qualified persons with doctoral or similar advanced degrees with clinical, management, basic science, or engineering research experience and prepare them to conduct independent research on problems related to disability and rehabilitation. This research training may integrate disciplines, teach research methodology in the environmental or new paradigm context and promote the capacity for disability studies and rehabilitation science. These training programs must operate in interdisciplinary environments and provide training in rigorous scientific methods.

The program is designed to give postdoctoral trainees the skills needed to become independent rehabilitation/disability researchers (e.g., provide advanced education and training in rehabilitation research to engineers and clinicians), and thereby, to build capacity in the field. The majority of the ARRT grant funding goes to training stipends to support the postdoctoral fellow’s training.

A grantee for an ARRT project provides training to postdoctoral fellows that is at least one academic year, unless a longer training period is necessary to ensure that each fellow is qualified to conduct independent research upon completion of the course of training. In addition, fellows receiving training under an ARRT project shall devote at least 80% of their time to the activities of the training program during the training period.

• Approximately 20 post-doctoral fellows finish their fellowships each year in areas such as:
  
  
  • Rehabilitation and biomedical engineering,
  • spinal cord and traumatic brain injury rehabilitation, and
  • rehabilitation counseling and psychology.
  
  
• The vast majority of fellows find employment in academic rehabilitation and disability research positions.
  
  
• Each year several ARRT fellows are selected to present at the annual meeting of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine at a special ARRT fellows session.

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Advanced Rehabilitation Research and Training Center Grants

• View a list of Advanced Rehabilitation Research and Training Center Grants maintained by the National Rehabilitation Information Center.

Note: This is one of several NIDRR grant programs. Congress provides an appropriation for NIDRR as a whole; see the main entry for NIDRR, CFDA # 84.133. The amounts listed here are a portion of the NIDRR appropriation.