Contact Info:

Dave Hudson
434.924.3606

Background

In the last decade, funded research activities at the University have more than doubled, and the complexity of the Federal regulatory environment has expanded resulting in a heavy burden for researchers and increased training and compliance responsibilities for the University. In fiscal year 2006, the University processed approximately 3,000 proposals for funding and received approximately 1,900 new extramural awards. Currently, there are approximately 2,000 open human research protocols and 500 open animal research protocols.

The University desires to optimize its research administration practices throughout all of its operations. Such optimization will include, but not be limited to: improvements in customer service; automation of workflow; risk avoidance and mitigation; secure data storage and transfer; enhancement of supervisory control capabilities; and an overall goal to build and maintain a research environment at the University that competes with peer institutions.

The current systems were built by University personnel, in their respective areas to meet narrow research administration objectives. Although there is some data sharing among these applications, the workflow is not automated and the data storage is neither normalized nor centralized.

The University seeks to evolve from this “silo” approach to an integrated research platform. Rather than having individual University investigators submit grant proposals and research protocols to multiple offices using multiple formats, processes and locations, the University desires that investigators be able to access all offices and processes via a centralized web-based portal. The ensuing portal workflow would move the individual grant proposal and/or protocol through the approval process appropriate for the specific research being pursued.