IRB Updates

Associate Professor Gary J. Greguras has been appointed as the Chairman of SMU’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) from 1 March 2013. A list of IRB’s members is listed here.

The vision of SMU’s IRB is to review all research involving human subjects that is proposed by faculty, staff and students affiliated with SMU, and aims for SMU to generate research that is in full compliance with internationally established standards of research-ethical principles.

A team from the Office of Research headed by Professor Steven Miller, Vice Provost (Research), will visit several universities in the United States to undertake an IRB external benchmarking study. In relation to this visit, Associate Professor Gary says:

‘This trip is indeed very timely. We hope to be able to learn about IRB’s best practices from these universities, including a review of their workflow processes, policies (especially in emerging research areas) and risk management guidelines. SMU can then assess more accurately how its IRB is managing in these areas when compared to others. The goal is for us to find out if there are any gaps that may exist in our processes and policies, and devise an improved IRB strategy for better performance.’