ORIA’s mission is to nurture and promote state-of-the-art research, scholarship and creative work at Mason, providing resources that promote the ethical and responsible conduct of research. The office staff provides services that: ensure the Mason community is knowledgeable about and complies with federal and other relevant regulations that pertain to the ethical and responsible conduct of research; identify compliance risks and communicate those risks to the Mason community; and monitor and investigate instances of noncompliance, demonstrating the University’s commitment to practice to the highest ethical standards in research and scholarship.
ORIA is responsible for Mason’s program for promoting excellence in all aspects of research with humans. A fundamental principle of ORIA’s program is that all research with human subjects must be reviewed prior to a project’s initiation. Ethical review of projects will either be conducted by ORIA staff or members of the Institutional Review Board (IRB). The IRB is a committee composed of faculty, staff, and community members who are trained in issues related to protecting human participants in research. ORIA also collaborates with other institutional review units on campus such as the the Institutional Biosafety Committee and the Radiation Safety Committee to further achieve ORIA’s primary goal of assuring that the rights and welfare of human research subjects in activities conducted at and/or under the auspices of George Mason University are adequately protected.