Skip to content
Duke Research and Innovation
About
Office for Research & InnovationReporting OfficesAssociated OfficesCommitteesContactsEventsCareer Opportunities2021–22 Annual Report
About
Office for Research & InnovationReporting OfficesAssociated OfficesCommitteesContactsEventsCareer Opportunities2021–22 Annual Report
Policies
Research Data Initiative
Policies
Research Data Initiative
Guidelines & Trainings
Support
Research AdministrationFunding and Research DevelopmentResearch Help
Support
Research AdministrationFunding and Research DevelopmentResearch Help
Resources
Postdoc ResourcesGraduate Student ResourcesCOVID-19 Research Information
Resources
Postdoc ResourcesGraduate Student ResourcesCOVID-19 Research Information
  1. Stories
  2. Duke Campus IRB Office Helps Keep the Wheels of Research Enterprise Turning

Story

Duke Campus IRB Office Helps Keep the Wheels of Research Enterprise Turning

“…our key role is to protect subjects and to inform subjects”


By Svetlana Monroe // October 18, 2021

Scientific research has produced enormous social benefits. But it has also raised some troubling ethical questions as potential risks occur for the people who participate in the journey that makes scientific breakthroughs possible.

If you are conducting research that involves the collection or analysis of information about living individuals or uses people in a manipulation or intervention, those individuals are considered human subjects. Duke University’s Federal-wide Assurance with the US Department of Health and Human Services mandates that all research with human subjects must be approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) before any interaction with human participants can begin. The Campus IRB is made up of 12 board members, including Duke faculty and staff (scientists and nonscientists alike) from across the University, and members from the community.

The first code to help protect human subjects involved in research arose during the Nuremberg War Crime Trials. It was created to set standards for judging physicians and scientists who conducted biomedical experiments on concentration camp prisoners during World War II. The subsequent “Belmont Report” published in 1979 was deliberately broader and established three basic ethical principles to guide conduct of research involving human subjects: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. Now, many years later, these basic ethical principles remain necessary and relevant, and laws and regulations have been built to cover complex situations arising in biomedical and behavioral research involving human participants.

Alejandro Martinez is the Associate Director of the Duke Campus IRB office. Together with five colleagues, he helps faculty and students navigate the process for submitting research protocols to the Campus IRB. The team provides one-on-one consultations to faculty and students, and offers training, seminars, and workshops. “We are always available to the researchers. We work hard to be service-oriented and to help researchers get their protocols approval, to make sure that the research enterprise’s wheels are turning,” Martinez says. In FY21 the office received and reviewed 610 new protocol submissions, 886 amendments to approved protocols, and 786 requests to extend an approval. Right now, they have nearly 1500 active protocols from a variety of disciplines. “The intellectual stimulation and problem-solving is very energizing part of my job,” he said. “Every protocol is different, we have to do risk-benefit analysis for each situation and this variability is very exciting. And it is very rewarding to hear about results of the studies that we have reviewed, although we mostly hear about them from the news.”

Martinez joined Duke University in May 2010, and has been the Associate Director for the Campus IRB since October 2018. While at Duke, he has worked on several projects and initiatives, he assists in the daily operations of the IRB office, leads training workshops across Campus units and departments.

Before coming to Duke, Martinez had a position at Florida International University, and also worked for an international marketing firm, nonprofits, and municipal government. On his free time, Alejandro enjoys his dog, tends to his plants and is involved in Buddhist community.


Written by

Svetlana Gladycheva, Assistant Vice President for Research

Svetlana Monroe

Svetlana earned her undergraduate degree in physics from Lomonosov Moscow State University, and her Ph.D. in experimental high energy physics and MFA in dance from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. Her graduate research involved ultra-cold spin-polarized hydrogen targets for use in high-energy physics experiments. While a graduate student in dance, an elective anatomy class sparked her interest in neuroscience and led her to complete two postdoctoral fellowships in experimental neuroscience — first in the department of molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Michigan and then in the pharmacology department at the University of Washington in Seattle studying molecular mechanisms of exocytosis using electrophysiological, optical, and biochemical methods. After joining Towson University in 2015, Svetlana has established research activity in the field of computational neuroscience, drawing on both her physics background and her experimental neuroscience experience.

Her teaching career interlaced with research and included teaching a wide variety of courses from physics of all levels to interdisciplinary and inter-field subjects. Her artistic endeavors culminated in a number of collaborations with theater, dance, and music collectives.

Share this story

Duke Office of Research and Innovation
myRESEARCHhome

Contact Our Office

421 Chapel DrBox 90037, Allen Bldg 119Durham, NC 27708-9984

Email

research-office@duke.edu

Phone

(919) 681-6438


Footer navigation


Join Our Bi-Weekly Newsletter

Get research stories delivered to your inbox 21 times per year!

Sign Up
TwitterInstagramYouTube

Duke University
Copyright © 2023 Duke University
Web AccessibilityPrivacy PolicyTitle IX