4006 Fleming Building

MEETING NOTES

PRESENT: Katarina Borer (chair), Kitty Bridges, Thomas Brock, Rex Holland, Pinaki Mazumder, Judy Nowack, Marvin Parnes, Jane Ritter (staff), Scott Stoltenberg, Robert Todd, Fawwaz Ulaby, and J. Hunter Waite.

Minutes of 12/13/02 were amended and approved. Minutes of 11/8/02 were amended and approved.

MODIFICATIONS OF RESEARCH TITLES: Discussion centered around Track I and Track II. Track I will be unaffected by the proposed changes.

ACTION: Add, “Primary Research Scientist titles in Track I will remain unchanged in Recommendation I.

The proposed changes will be presented to SACUA at their meeting on 1/13/03.

PATRIOT ACT: Discussion centered around responsibility for following the regulations. In the past, it was the responsibility of the funding agency and universities could participate or not. ITAR primarily dealt with Engineering and Biosciences. Now the emphasis will be on biosciences. The following questions/areas of discussion came up:

1. Security Committee (versus science committee) and the notion of confidentiality.

2. Whatever we come up with in US won’t work unless all countries cooperate.

3. Where do you draw the line on what is published and what isn’t published? I.e. case studies. How can we publish parts of research studies?

Basic approaches are having the scientific community get involved and come up with solutions or the government comes in with solutions, which may be ineffective. The scientific community should come up with answers, which may be adopted by the government.

There is an AAU Workshop in San Diego in early March and this topic will be on the agenda. VP Ulaby is working on this.

At UM local level, discussion is emerging in two areas: faculty perspective (RPC, for e.g.) and administrative (Deans, Provost, VP Ulaby) and how to implement policies. This is a problem and we hope to come up with something by fall.

Marvin Parnes presented on ITAR and copies will be forwarded to RPC members.

IRBs must weigh the risks and benefits to subjects. How we use technology defines ethics – not the technology itself. The focus is on the question of limiting publication for individual investigators. What are the guidelines? One method is for ethical standards to be created by professional organizations and voluntarily held to by individual investigators rather than UM adjudicating.

The next meeting will be February 14, 2003, at 10:00 am.