U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, will present $400,000 in grants from a Shadyside-based charitable, public foundation this evening that will fund research into improvements in the care, treatment and rehabilitation of traumatic limb injuries received on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The hope is that the advances then will be transferred to the civilian arena.

Presentation of the grants from the Airlift Research Foundation are the first of what the foundation plans to be two annual presentations of two-year grants of $200,000 each to fund research into traumatic limb injuries from the wars. The goal of the research is to produce results in five years that immediately would benefit military personnel and later be applicable to civilian victims of limb trauma from car and industrial accidents, for example.

The grants will be awarded to Yunzhi Peter Yang, assistant professor and a biomedical engineer at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and Dr. Christopher Born, chief of orthopaedic trauma at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, R.I. Dr. Born, whose grant will be accepted by Dr. John Jarrell on his behalf, is unable to attend because he is in Haiti helping tend to injuries from the devastating earthquake there.

The grants are viewed as seed money so the researchers who receive them can leverage more research funds from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health or the Department of Defense.

Also attending the private ceremony in Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall in Oakland will be Glenn W. "Jim" Johnson III, chairman of the foundation's board of directors; Dr. Susan Pressly Lephart, foundation president; and retired Army First Lt. Edwin Salau, a foundation board member.

Lt. Salau received the Purple Heart after he lost his leg above the knee during a 2004 tour of Iraq when the Bradley Fight Vehicle in which he was riding was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Lt. Salau's injury illustrates the foundation's position that research in the field is needed because 82 percent of all war injuries in Afghanistan and Iraq involve extremities. The wars have produced wounds never before seen in such quantity because most are caused by improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades.

Many soldiers are receiving serious injuries but surviving such blasts more so than in the past because of improved body armor, better battlefield medical care and speedy airlifts to hospitals.

Formed last year, the foundation's mission is "to fund orthopaedic research, increase public awareness of traumatic war injuries to military and civilian survivors worldwide, and collaborate with other groups that have similar interests."

The foundation hopes that funding will address the protection of limbs, treatment of injuries in the field, rehabilitation and quality of life research that has immediate benefits for war survivors and future benefits for all orthopaedic trauma patients.

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