Charla Nash smiles as her care worker washes her face at her apartment in Boston. The Department of Defense is following Nash's progress, after funding her transplant surgery in 2011.

BOSTON — Charla Nash never served in the military. She was horribly disfigured, not in combat, but in a 2009 attack by a rampaging chimpanzee. The Pentagon, though, is watching her recovery closely.

The U.S. military paid for Nash’s full face transplant in 2011 and is underwriting her follow-up treatment at a combined cost estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the hope that some of the things it learns can help young, seriously disfigured soldiers returning from war.

In the coming weeks, for example, Nash will take part in a military-funded experiment in which doctors at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital will try to wean her off the anti-rejection drugs she has been taking since the transplant.

Nash jokes about sometimes feeling like a science project. But the 61-year-old daughter of an Air Force veteran said she gets real satisfaction out of letting the doctors use her for research, and sees it as an opportunity to help wounded soldiers and “do something good out of all of this bad.”

Nash lost her nose, lips, eyelids and hands when she was mauled by her employer’s 200-pound pet chimpanzee in Stamford, Conn. Doctors also had to remove her eyes because of a disease transmitted by the chimp.

She later received new facial features taken from a dead woman. She also underwent a double hand transplant, but it failed when her body rejected the tissue.

Now blind, Nash spends most of her days listening to AM radio and books on tape. She also exercises a couple of days a week with a trainer at a gym to build her strength and stay healthy. A GoFundMe account is being set up to help raise money for prosthetic hands.

About every six weeks, Nash undergoes lab tests for the military at Brigham and Women’s. She is also subjected to MRIs and CT scans to determine how well her brain is sending signals to her new face. In addition, doctors examine how well the arteries are delivering blood to the transplant.

“It makes sense for us to look at the civilian community and the experiences that are gained through the involvement of nonuniformed people to assess if this is a good solution for the military,” said Dr. Brian Pfister, a portfolio manager for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command’s Clinical and Rehabilitative Medicine research program.

About 35 full or partial face transplants have been performed worldwide since the first one was done in France in 2005. The Pentagon is providing grants to 14 medical facilities across the U.S. through its hand and face transplantation program.