Skip to main content

Office for Research

The Office for Research is the main steward of Northwestern’s research enterprise. Its offices provide a variety of services to faculty to support their research.

Learn more about its offices and centers:

  • Center for Comparative Medicine: The core service, teaching and training unit dedicated to supporting human animal care and use in research and education. 
  • Conflict of Interest Office: Oversees and implements the University’s institutional, research, faculty and stuff conflict of interest policies and procedures, ensuring compliance with applicable regulatory requirements. 
  • Export Controls: Oversees University training and compliance with US laws and regulations that regulate the distribution of technology, services, and information to foreign nationals and foreign countries for reasons including foreign policy and national security. 
  • Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee Office: Reviews and approves protocols for Northwestern’s program for the humane care and use of animals, inspects the animal facilities and investigator laboratories, and reports its findings to the Institutional Official.
  • Institutional Review Board: The IRB office is dedicated to the protection of the rights and welfare of participants in human research. It administratively supports the IRB which is responsible for approving research protocols, informed consent documents, and other study material before a study can begin. 
  • Research Analytics: Promotes a data-driven culture in the Office for Research by partnering with key stakeholders to develop analytics solutions for informed decision making.
  • Research Development: Designs and executes activities aimed at securing extramural funding, with a focus on interdisciplinary programs. Manages limited submissions, provides curated lists of funding opportunities, and provides seed funding to build interdisciplinary programs. 
  • Research Integrity: Fosters research integrity and promotes responsible conduct of research through coordination of training and facilitation of the review of alleged research misconduct. 
  • Resources for Good Research Practices: Useful information about responsibly conducting research at Northwestern, including a new PI onboarding checklist. 
  • Research Safety: Responsible for identifying potential hazards and risks in basic science research and in finding effective, practical solutions to ensure the protection of individuals, public health, and the environment. 
  • Research-Related PI: Incoming faculty with research portfolios should reference the Research-Related PI Onboarding Procedure Checklist to help guide their initial interactions with Northwestern research offices.
  • Sponsored Research: Supports all sponsored projects at Northwestern, from proposal submission to award setup to progress updates to award closeout. Provides sponsored project online training.  
  • University Research Institutes and Centers Administration: Provides administration and operation support to the University Research Institutes and Centers and is responsible for reducing administrative barriers associated with interdisciplinary programs. 
  • Core Facilities: Provides state of the art equipment, services and technical expertise for researchers who do not have these capabilities in their own labs.