The Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research (IRB) provides a mechanism to protect individuals involved as subjects in research conducted under the auspices of the University, in line with ADU’s ethical and legal responsibilities. Any research conducted at, supported by, or affiliated with Abu Dhabi University that involves human subjects must be reviewed by the IRB prior to the initiation of the research. The aim is to ensure that the rights of the human subjects are not violated in any way, either physically or emotionally. Based on the potential level of risk for human subjects, research projects may be exempted from being reviewed, may be expedited or may be subjected to a full review as detailed in the Board’s policy and guidelines.
The IRB includes a representative of each College and program in addition to an ethicist, a science representative, a non-science representative, and the Director of Research as an ex-officio non-voting member.
The review process is based on the Board’s mandating policy and guidelines, which in turn use the concept of minimal risk to decide the extent to which the subject’s interests warrant formal and extensive review of the research proposal. The following three principles constitute the basis for the review process: