Principal investigators, lead course instructors, and other study staff are typically invited to attend IBC meetings when their research or teaching protocols require full committee review. While attendance at IBC meetings is not strictly required, it is strongly recommended. The IBC wants to do a careful review of your proposal and often has questions, which can be more easily answered if you are present at the meeting. In most cases, your attendance at IBC meetings will allow the review to go more smoothly and will increase the likelihood that your submission will be approved.

Do I need to bring anything?

Nope! All of your submission materials will have already been distributed to the committee in advance of the meeting and will be accessible by the committee during the meeting. It may be helpful to have your submission in front of you for reference as well, but we will also typically display your submission during the meeting to help everyone follow along as questions are asked.

If there are additional details (papers, data, etc.) that weren’t included in your submission that you think would be valuable to the committee’s review, please email them to uwm-biosafety@uwm.edu or your Biosafety office contact in advance of the meeting so that we can distribute them and/or display them during the meeting.

Who will be there?

A majority of IBC members will be present at the meeting. Depending on current membership, this is typically 5-10 members.

• Most IBC members are UWM faculty and staff. They are researchers, teachers, lab managers, safety professionals, or other staff who will evaluate the safety of your proposed work based on university requirements and their own scientific background and expertise.
• 1-3 community members will also be present. Community members are individuals who are unaffiliated with UWM and volunteer their time to our IBC to provide the perspective of our surrounding community with respect to environmental and human health protection.
• Biosafety and Research Compliance office staff (Jill and Melody) will also be present. We assist with the overall meeting scheduling, so have likely already been in touch with you in advance of the meeting.

What will happen at the meeting?

Our meetings are open meetings, in accordance with Wisconsin state law. This means you may arrive at the meeting whenever you’d like. We may be discussing something else when you arrive, so if that’s the case, you can stay in the meeting or feel free to duck out and come back at your scheduled time. If the review ahead of yours is taking longer than expected and it will be a while, or if we need to go into closed session, we’ll be sure to let you know.

Once we’re ready to review your study, the Chair will typically ask you to introduce yourself and give us an overview of your research. Remember that you are speaking to a diverse audience of scientists and community members, so include an explanation of why your work is important and what motivates it. It is also particularly helpful if you can briefly describe how the procedures in your submission will be conducted and how they fit together in the overall experiment or course design. Everyone will have reviewed the materials already, but it’s still helpful to hear a summary from the researcher or instructor.

After you provide a summary, the Chair or another IBC member will lead the process of asking questions that have been posed in advance by the various members of the IBC. These questions will generally focus on clarifying any procedures that were unclear, getting additional detail on the materials you’ll use, or requesting additional safety information. Other members of the committee may also chime in with new questions or comments as the discussion progresses.

Remember, most questions are simply that – questions! The committee asks them because they want to fully understand your research or teaching plan. They are not intended to criticize or imply that your work plan is wrong. In some cases, the committee may think that something should be changed; but if so, those items will be called out and communicated to you directly.

Don’t worry about trying to take notes. The Biosafety & Research Compliance office staff take detailed notes, so you can just focus on answering the IBC’s questions. You’ll receive an email within 1-2 business days outlining the specific changes needed in your materials.

Once the IBC’s questions are answered, we’ll thank you for coming and you’ll be invited to leave.

What happens next?

After you’ve left, the Chair will ask for any final discussion and then the IBC will vote on your study. To approve the proposal, the IBC must agree that:

• risks to researchers, students, the community, and the environment are reduced to an acceptable level by use of appropriate practices & procedures, safety equipment, and facilities;
• use of biohazardous materials is justified based on the research hypotheses or teaching objectives; and
• all relevant university, state, and federal regulations and guidelines are being followed.

There are 4 possible votes that the committee can make:

• Approve (uncommon), meaning there are no clarifications or revisions needed at all.
• Approve with minor modifications (most common), meaning your study qualifies for approval if you make specific changes requested by the IBC.
• Table (second most common), meaning the IBC doesn’t have enough information to say that the approval criteria are met or can reasonably be met. You’ll work with Biosafety office staff to address remaining questions, and the IBC will review it again.
• Disapprove (extremely rare), meaning the approval criteria can’t be met, even with changes. In this case, you’ll be informed of exactly why the criteria cannot be met. Depending on the situation, there may be a way to adjust the research question(s) or scope of a new submission to be eligible for approval.

As mentioned above, you’ll receive an email within 1-2 business days after the meeting with details of the committee’s decision and any revisions requested. Biosafety office staff will be in touch to assist with next steps depending on the committee’s vote.

If you have any questions along the way, please feel free to contact the UWM Biosafety office at uwm-biosafety@uwm.edu or 414-588-4261.