RD2025 Travel Award Information

The Due Date for Travel Award Applications is midnight (Eastern US Time), May 19, 2025.

As with previous RD meetings, we will award approximately 50 Travel Awards to fully support the travel, registration, and lodging costs of highly qualified trainees and early career investigators to attend both the RD Meeting and the BrightFocus AMD Fast Track. To qualify for an RD2025 symposium travel award, applicants must be a current graduate student, postdoctoral fellow, resident in ophthalmology, clinical fellow, or a faculty member at the level of Assistant Professor or lower and must work on macular or retinal degenerations that involve photoreceptors and/or the retinal pigment epithelium. Travel award applications including an abstract must be submitted through our website using the link below.

Promoting Inclusion: The RD Meeting organizers are committed to organizing a conference in the retinal degeneration field that is open and welcoming to all.  We have for many years maintained gender balance in offering travel awards and encouraged applications from underrepresented minorities and persons with disabilities. We will continue these policies at RD2025 and all future meetings. 

Travel Award applicants should not register for the meeting until after the final awards have been announced.

IMPORTANT: Please note that successful travel awardees agree to the following conditions when accepting the award.

1. Awardees that are postdoctoral fellows through junior faculty are required to submit a short chapter for the proceedings volume. Travel reimbursements will be made only after receipt of your chapter. To expedite reimbursement, you may submit your chapter before the meeting, if desired. Due date for all proceedings chapters is November 30, 2025. For more information about the book chapters and instructions, please use this link or refer to the respective tab on our homepage. A contribution of a chapter by graduate students is encouraged but not required.
2. Awardees will be automatically registered for the BrightFocus Macular Degeneration Fast Track. Participation in this training session is considered part of the educational experience you will receive at the RD2025 meeting. Participation is mandatory for awardees.
3. All Awardees must give either a platform or a poster presentation at the meeting.
4. All Awardees are expected to attend all platform and poster sessions at the meeting. Failure to do so may affect reimbursement for travel expenses.
5. We will take photographs of all travel awardees and we will ask that you grant us permission to use these images for promotion of the RD Meeting.

To apply for a travel award, you must submit the following three items:

1. A formatted abstract containing the sections ‘Purpose’, ‘Methods’, ‘Results’, and ‘Conclusions’.
2. A brief statement of your current position and your career goals.
3. A brief summary of your work’s relevance to retinal degeneration.

To apply for a travel award, use this link