Faculty with ongoing faculty appointments — including Instructor, Senior Instructor, Professor of Teaching, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor, Clinical Assistant Professor, Clinical Associate Professor, Clinical Professor, or BCCA Investigator — are automatically eligible to serve as Principal Investigator (PI) for research requiring approval from the UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board (BREB). Lecturers, Postdoctoral Fellows, or other faculty require a letter of support from the Dean/Department head indicating that the researcher has the capacity to conduct the research independently as the PI and the department is aware of and supports the research. Once you have received this approval, please submit to one of the BREB coordinators in the Office of Research Ethics. The Office of Research Ethics considers these requests on a case-by-case basis and may grant temporary PI status for a specific research project.
The PI bears the overall responsibility for the conduct of the study and is required to act within the guidelines of the “Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans” (TCPS 2 2018, https://ethics.gc.ca/eng/policy-politique_tcps2-eptc2_2018.html). All study team members, including PIs, must complete the TCPS 2 CORE tutorial and record the date of completion in their RISe profile before ethics approval will be granted.
All study team members, including PIs, must complete the TCPS 2 tutorial and record the date of completion in their RISe profile before ethics approval will be granted. If you are considering a BREB application, we strongly encourage you to complete this tutorial sooner rather than later, as it can shape your research design. For more information about Research Ethics requirements, see https://ethics.research.ubc.ca/behavioural-research-ethics/breb-guidance-notes.
Instructors who are applying for research ethics approval for course-based research projects in courses they are teaching can be listed as a PI on their application. Please see the guidelines for submitting applications and requesting PI status: Course-Based Research Project Guidelines (Aug 2019).
When creating your ethics application, if you cannot find the PI's name in the list, have it added into the RISe system by emailing the following information to RISe Support Full Name (Including middle initial), Department (or affiliation with the University), UBC Rank, Email Address, Phone Number and UBC employee number (if applicable). Once an account is created, new users will receive their researcher number via email.