Young Investigator Pilot Grants

Small in scope, large in impact, Movement Disorders Foundation is the only grantmaker in Colorado that exclusively funds cross-disease research in the spectrum of clinical disorders that includes Parkinson's disease and parkinsonism, dystonia, essential tremor, Huntington's disease and more. 

Our Young Investigator Pilot Grant (YIPG) program funds “high risk/ high reward” translational and clinical research that establishes cross-disease analysis and investigation aimed at developing new insights into the etiology, pathophysiology and/or treatment of multiple movement disorders.

These grants represent our foundation's greatest commitment to research that advances the prevention, treatment and/or ultimate cure for all movement disorders.

Grant applicants are required to address specific applicability to two or more movement disorders in their research and demonstrate the potential to facilitate rapid translation to clinically useful therapies. The YIPG program is restricted to postdoctoral fellows in movement disorders or basic neuroscience or instructors and assistant professors within the first five years of their research fellowship training. 

Each grant provides recipients with $50,000 of funding per year for up to two years. If substantial productivity is demonstrated in the first year, the grant may be renewed for an additional year if the awardee can demonstrate how the funding will facilitate competition for a NIH R01 grant or equivalent. 

In 2024, Movement Disorders Foundation funded three research projects with specific applicability to Huntington’s disease, as well as one other movement disorder. Funding for our inaugural round of grants was made possible by the generosity of the late Margaret Barber and the Barber Foundation Trust. 

Movement Disorders Foundation offers donors at all levels of giving the opportunity to support individual research projects as well as specific disease categories such as Parkinson's and Huntington's disease, dystonia and other movement disorders. 

Most importantly, all of our supporters receive routine communication on their funded research including breakthroughs and progress reports on their funded projects, insights from researchers and experts in the field, videos from researchers and virtual lab tours, impact metrics, Q&A sessions with researchers and more.