Opportunity Overview
The Indiana Department of Health, through the Indiana Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Fund and Indiana CTSI, is accepting 2026 proposals supporting research on the prevention, treatment and cure of traumatic spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury. The program expressly includes acute management, medical complications, rehabilitative techniques and neuronal recovery.
Funding
Basic science proposals may request up to $80,000 per year for two years, or $160,000 total. Clinical research involving human subjects, human biological samples or human-subject data may request up to $100,000 per year for two years, or $200,000 total. Early commercialization proposals targeting new diagnostic or therapeutic drugs or devices may request up to $100,000 for one year. IDOH states that the research fund is expected to generate approximately $1.6 million per year, with the majority allocated to research projects.
Eligibility and Priority
Primary research must be Indiana-based. The lead institution or organization and principal investigator must satisfy the current Indiana requirements, while collaborations with researchers outside Indiana are encouraged subject to the RFA’s limits on out-of-state salary support. Current Indiana CTSI guidance gives priority to revised applications from the 2021 RFA, junior investigators within five years of their last training period, researchers entering a new research direction, returning investigators whose prior awards moved work along the translational spectrum or led to extramural support, and early-commercialization research reasonably expected to lead to future SBIR/STTR funding or private investment.
Deadline and Submission
The current submission deadline is December 3, 2026 through Indiana CTSI WebCAMP. The controlling current public materials do not publish an exact clock time or time zone, so Atlas must treat the final cutoff as unresolved until authoritatively confirmed.
Atlas Fit
Atlas Opportunity Score: 96/100. N9+ Fit: 82/100 conditional. A scientifically justified N9+ role could be credible within an eligible Indiana-led clinical-research or early-commercialization project focused on traumatic spinal cord or brain injury, but ordinary initial outreach must not introduce or sell N9+. Dr. Miltie is not verified as an eligible direct lead applicant because the lead institution or organization must be Indiana-based; the defensible path is an Indiana-led research or commercialization partnership unless Marc separately directs a verified vendor pursuit.
Required Next Action
Identify a qualified Indiana lead institution and Indiana-based principal investigator with a responsive SCI/TBI project, verify the live 2026 application and review template, confirm project-specific budget treatment for equipment, technology, subcontractors and any N9+ role, and clear Contact, Email Opt-Out, hard-bounce, Deal, Atlas_Email_Queue and authoritative send-history deduplication before ORIGINAL outreach. Because the exact December 3 submission clock time and time zone are not published, do not create new cold outreach until the cutoff is authoritatively resolved.