The complexity of the permanent of low rank matrices
The paper "Two algorithmic results for the traveling salesman problem" by Barvinok describes an $n^{\mathcal{O}(m)}$ algorithm for computing the permanent of a rank-m matrix. I don't know whether this can be improved to $\mathrm{poly}(n) 2^{\mathcal{O}(m)}$.

(I originally posted this as a comment. I post it as an answer by lack of any other answers.)