Long-time Health Sciences – Institutional Review Board (HS-IRB) Office Director, Nichelle Cobb, PhD, has joined ICTR in a brand new role that capitalizes on her expertise in human subjects protection to support the expansion of clinical and translational research support at UW SMPH and UW Health.
As the ICTR Human Subjects Protections Officer, Cobb will provide expertise for workforce development programs related to research with human subjects to support research teams and members of the health-care workforce who have direct or indirect roles in implementing research with human participants. This programing will be sponsored by ICTR, as well as the Chief Clinical Research Office for SMPH and UW Health, led by Betsy Nugent.
Allan Brasier, ICTR Executive Director of ICTR and SMPH Senior Associate Dean for Clinical & Translational Research, comments:
ICTR is extremely fortunate to attract someone of Dr. Cobb’s caliber to take part in the new initiative for advancing UW SMPH/UW Health as a premier clinical research organization. While at the HS-IRBs office, she played a national role in developing multi-site IRB reliance agreements. This leadership was pivotal to ICTR efforts to improve the clinical research infrastructure locally and nationwide. We are very privileged to welcome her to our ICTR family and look forward to more successful collaborations!
In collaboration with Dorothy Farrar-Edwards and others, Cobb is a co-investigator on a project developing the use of “eConsent” through MyChart, the UW Health Electronic Health Record interface for patients. This effort reflects the dedication of the UW Healthcare entity to expanding participation of patients in clinical research.
Cobb is also part of a national team tasked with protecting research participants across multisite studies. Supported by NIH through the Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program which also funds UW ICTR, the SMART IRB platform (Streamlined, Multisite, Accelerated Resources for Trials IRB Reliance) is designed to harmonize and streamline the IRB review process for multisite studies, while ensuring a high level of protection for research participants.
Welcome, Dr. Cobb!