News & Spotlights, NNE-CTR, Larner College of Medicine, UVM

Invitation to NSF Virtual Information session: Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) program

Ensuring that research is conducted in an ethical and responsible manner requires systems and processes to understand, encourage, and provide training in ethical research conduct, prevent and mitigate problems when they do occur, and grapple with new questions and challenges posed by novel technologies and research areas. This is work that many of us already do as researchers, educators, and administrators, but you may not know that there are federal funds available to support research, planning, training, and implementation of ethical and responsible research initiatives.

Dr. Jason Borenstein, Program Director of NSF’s Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) program, will deliver a virtual presentation on Microsoft Teams on Thursday November 7th from noon to 1pm. The presentation is open to participants from institutions across the northeast, so please forward the invitation to anyone who might be interested.

Presentation Abstract
The goal of this presentation is to introduce the audience to the Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) program at the U.S. National Science Foundation. The ER2 program supports projects that examine what constitutes or promotes responsible and ethical research in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The ER2 program encourages STEM researchers, practitioners and educators at all career stages to conduct research with integrity and to educate others about responsible and ethical research practice. The presentation will include a brief history of the ER2 program, and a description of the types of proposals that are supported by the program and the merit review process. A portion of the time will be set aside to address questions from the audience.

Some examples of projects that have been funded through the ER2 program:

Community-Engaged Design and Implementation of a Framework for Ethical Online Communities Research ($400,000)
Pathways to Ethics of Technology in the Liberal Arts Curriculum ($399,000)
Comprehensive Approach for Safe, Inclusive, and Responsible Research: An Incubation Project ($90,000)
Collaborative Research: Creating and Sustaining Cultures of Best Practice: Supporting STEM Labs to Develop Tailored, Comprehensive Data Management Plans ($304,000)
Enabling Ethical Analysis, Public Engagement and Public Justification in State-Level Pandemic Responses in the United States ($455,000)
Research Ethics in STEM: Network Building and Graduate Student Training ($298,000)
Collaborative Research: Research: Early-Career Engineers Experiences with Equity and Ethics as They Transition to Practice and Implications for Formation of Engineers ($159,000)

Presenter Bio
Jason Borenstein is a Program Director within the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. His primary responsibility is managing the Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) program. His duties include coordinating the merit review process for grant proposals submitted to the ER2 program and administering awards. Dr. Borenstein’s research interests include robot & artificial intelligence ethics, engineering ethics, research ethics, and bioethics.

Recent News

For University of Vermont-related news, see below. For MaineHealth news, click here.

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Over the past two years, we’ve heard a lot about quarantines and vaccinations, but there’s a critical aspect of the pandemic response that doesn’t get its equal share of the spotlight: testing. To address this, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched the RADx program to support research that expands testing accessibility, and Drs. Adam Atherly of the University of Vermont and Yvonne Jonk of the University of Southern Maine were recently awarded RADx-UP funding to pursue their collaborative project on expanding testing access in our rural areas.

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