New Associate VP for Research Integrity & Compliance

Dear Colleagues,

Dr. Jeff Botkin will officially step down from his role as the Associate Vice President for Research Integrity and Compliance as of July 1, 2019.  Dr. Botkin was appointed to the position by Ray Gesteland, Vice President for Research, in 2002. Over the past 17 years, Jeff has been instrumental in establishing the conflict of interest policy and committee, the institutional conflict of interest policy, the expansion of our Institutional Review Board (IRB) office, the ERICA system, and the biosafety committee. Under his tenure, Research Education and the Research Administration Training Series (RATS) was created. As the Research Integrity Officer, he managed a number of research misconduct cases from across campus. Dr. Botkin has been a leader at the national level of issues of research ethics including service as chair of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections, chair of the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) stem cell review committee, and service on two committees for the National Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine. Dr. Botkin is a Professor of Pediatrics and will continue his research and teaching at the University with a focus on bioethics and the ethical, legal and social issues in human genetics.

I am pleased to announce the promotion of Dr. Erin Rothwell, PhD, from the role of Assistant Vice President to Associate Vice President for Research Integrity and Compliance for the University of Utah, effective July 1, 2019.  

Dr. Rothwell will have oversight for the Human Subjects Protection Program and the related compliance offices, including the Intuitional Review Board (IRB), Conflict of Interest (COI), Research Misconduct, Resource for Genetic and Epidemiologic Research (RGE), Research Education, and the Biosafety Committee.  

Dr. Rothwell completed a competitive bioethics fellowship from the Medical College of Wisconsin. She has extensive experience in bioethics and human subjects protections having served on the IRB and hospital ethics committees. Dr. Rothwell also brings a wealth of experience from her successful program of research on informed patient decision making and the ethical implications of emerging technologies within the context of genomics, population screening, and public health across the reproductive continuum of care. She is currently the contact principal investigator on a NIH grant to improve the consent process for the storage and research use of residual newborn screening blood spots, and recently completed another clinical trial, also funded by the NIH, to improve patient decision-making for prenatal screening. Currently, she is a member of the leadership teams for the Center for Clinical and Translational Science and the NIH Center in Excellence for Ethical, Legal and Social Implications in Genetics.  Dr. Rothwell will retain these positions in her new role.

Dr. Rothwell is looking forward to leading efforts across our campus to improve transparency and accountability of our research enterprise, including clinical trials tracking, improving awareness of research integrity, and growing our national leadership reputation in research ethics and human subjects protections.

Please join me in thanking Dr. Botkin for his exceptional service of 17 years and in welcoming Dr. Rothwell as she assumes full responsibility for this role.

Sincerely,

Andrew S. Weyrich, Ph.D.
Vice President for Research

 

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