Summary: The fiscal year 2026 (FY26) Military Burn Research Program (MBRP) Discovery Award supports innovative, untested, groundbreaking research that provides new insights and explores early concepts in combat-relevant burn care that provide the foundation for future translational and/or clinical research. The proposed project may be exploratory, hypothesis-driven, or hypothesis-generating research, but must be novel and must be based on a strong scientific rationale and a well-developed study design.

Distinctive Features: The focus of this award mechanism is innovation. Proposed research should lay the groundwork for future avenues of scientific investigation or product development in the area of combat-relevant burn care. The outcome of research supported by this award should be the generation of robust preliminary data that can be used as a foundation for groundbreaking future research projects.