CONTACT US
Dr. Sofia Ahmed, Vice Chair – Research
Email: dom.research@ucalgary.ca
HEALTH & SAFETY
CONTACTS
Environmental Health and Safety
Email: ucsafety@ucalgary.ca
For a full list of EHS contacts, please visit https://live-risk.ucalgary.ca/risk/environment-health-safety/contact-us
LABORATORY SAFETY
In order to address the health, safety, and environmental challenges specific to the laboratories, programs, safety and procedure manuals and laboratory specific training courses have now been developed by UCalgary Environment, Health & Safety (EHS)
The EHS Laboratory Safety Program can be found at: https://live-risk.ucalgary.ca/risk/environment-health-safety/programs-standards/programs/laboratory-safety
EHS TRAINING MODULES
A list of training modules can be found on the EHS website at: https://live-risk.ucalgary.ca/risk/environment-health-safety/training
All training requires login through UCalgary’s Central Authentication Service (i.e. you will need your UCalgary IT account credentials to login), but various tabs that will get you there are hyperlinked below.
- All university employees (including faculty, management and staff) need to complete the University’s Occupational Health & Safety Orientation within the first week of employment. You will also need to complete the Hazard Assessment Training
- All managers and supervisors are required to complete the Incident Reporting and Investigation Training.
- All people who work in/supervise a laboratory environment need to complete the following training (all listed on the Laboratory Health and Safety Orientation and Training Record):
- If the lab deals with biohazards (most department members with labs will fall into this category), you will also require Biosafety (Program) Training and Biosafety (Annual Refresher) Training.
- If applicable, the completion certificate for this module is required by the University’s Research and Trust Accounting department to set up new project accounts – you will not get your money if you don’t do this!
- If you will be working directly in a lab with biohazard designation (i.e. not just supervising staff and students), you will also need to complete Biosafety (Biohazard Handling) Training, as well as Biosafety (Bloodborne Pathogens) Training if working with bloodborne pathogens.
Any other courses offered should be listed through the “Course Listing – Mandatory Training” tab on the University’s Environmental Health and Safety webpage.
ETHICS & COMPLIANCE
Department members conducting research involving humans, animals or bio-hazards must obtain required certifications and approvals. Links to relevant University of Calgary web-pages are provided. If you are planning to conduct research involving either humans or animals, be sure to first register yourself in the IRISS system.
- For research involving humans, you will need to:
- Complete the Tri-Council Policy Statement (TCPS) 2 Course on Research Ethics (Core) Tutorial prior to gaining ethics approval. The tutorial takes 3 hours to complete (can be self-paced) and a certificate is issued following successful completion of a multiple-choice quiz.
- Submit an ethics application for review by either the Conjoint Health Research Ethics Board or the Health Research Ethics Board of Alberta Cancer Committee through the online IRISS system.
- For research involving animals, you will need to:
- Submit an Animal Use Protocol for review by the Animal Care Committee (Request access to the Animal health Unit Website) through the online IRISS system.
- Ensure all individuals working with animals have completed required components of the Institutional Animal User Training Program.
FUNDING
Research programs require funding, which can come from many different sources, from small, internal seed grants to large, multi-national team grants. There are several offices within the University of Calgary and the Cumming School of Medicine that exist to support your research activities, both pre-award (i.e. during the process of applying for funding) and post-award (i.e. managing funds from successful applications).
RESEARCH MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (RMS)
- The Research Management System (RMS) is a new platform that manages the pre-award, post-award, and publication phases of a research grant or contract. Throughout the Grants and Contracts life-cycle, RMS interfaces with other UCalgary systems, such as IRISS and PeopleSoft, to provide a seamless process for grants and awards management, eliminate re-keying of data and heightened transparency into the status of applications at any time.
- RMS Website: https://research.ucalgary.ca/rms
- UCalgary RMS Information Package
PRE-AWARD
- New Faculty – please read! The University of Calgary’s Research Services Office has prepared a handbook that will help you navigate the research funding landscape. More guides, checklists, resources, and links can be found on the UCalgary Research webpage.
- For pre-award support, the University advertises many current and up-coming funding opportunities. We will periodically post awards of particular relevance to department members on the Department’s calendar as well.
FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
Visit the Grant Development & Research Facilitation office at the Cumming School of Medicine for more information on funding opportunities.
- Internal opportunities (administered through the University of Calgary):
- Faculty Conference Travel Grants
- Conference and Workshop Grants
- Thesis and Dissertation Research Grants
- Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning Grants
- University Research Grants Committees (URGC) Seed Grant Programs
- University of Calgary Faculty Seed Grants (Sciences, Engineering and Medicine)
- University of Calgary SSHRC Explore Faculty Seed Grants
- University of Calgary SSHRC Exchange Partnership Seed Grants
- Margaret Gunn Endowment for Animal Research
- Clinical Research Fund (in partnership with Alberta Health Services)
- Global Health and International Partnership Funding (includes undergraduate, graduate, and faculty travel awards for research, education, elective training, and knowledge dissemination)
- External opportunities are numerous and highly variable, based on topic, source, amount and length. The University of Calgary does a very good job listing current and up-coming funding opportunities through its Funding Deadline Calendar for researchers and a more tailored version for Fellows and Postdocs. Faculty members are also encouraged to sign up for a COS Pivot account, an external, searchable database of research funding opportunities that requires a University of Calgary ID.
- There are a number of additional University of Calgary Research Services resources that can help you during the pre-award phase, many of which can be accessed at http://www.ucalgary.ca/research/researchers/forms-and-resources.
POST-AWARD
- Internal opportunities (administered through the University of Calgary):
- For post-award support through the University of Calgary, in addition to Ethics and Compliance, you will need to work with Research Accounting to set up and manage the funds from your award.
- You may also find that your research requires some sort of Research Contract or Agreement – if you think this might be the case, but aren’t sure exactly what you might need, review the “Contract and agreement types” tab. Examples include: Confidential Disclosure Agreements, Consulting Agreements, Clinical Trial Agreements, Data Sharing Agreements, Material Transfer Agreements, Research/Service Agreements (e.g. with Alberta Health Services or private industry partners).
Please note that the Cumming School of Medicine has its own legal team that is separate from the rest of the University of Calgary
- CSM Legal, Research Services: https://cumming.ucalgary.ca/research-institutes/csm-research-services/legal-research-services
- Main Campus Legal, Research Services: https://www.ucalgary.ca/legalservices/
As an academic department within the Cumming School of Medicine, we are committed to the highest quality research for the benefit of our patients and society as a whole. Here you will find information and links to support academic research through the University of Calgary and Alberta Health Services (AHS). Additional UCalgary resources are outlined in this section’s sub-pages.
The Calgary Centre for Clinical Research (CCCR) provides centralized support services and helps investigators navigate the clinical research process and assist with study administration from startup to closure. Department of Medicine has many members who are also members who contribute significantly to research institutes across the University of Calgary.
AHS resources for researchers can be accessed through the following website or by emailing research.administration@ahs.ca.
The intent of the Department’s Research team is to help members, especially new faculty members, navigate research-related processes (i.e. funding application, legal, ethics, research accounting) and foster research collaborations between Department members and scientists in the various research institutes.
We have established links to Grant Development and Research Facilitation in the Office of the Associate Dean, Research (OADR) in the CSM. The OADR Grant Development and Research Facilitation team consists of Jenna Slobozian, Cert RA (j.slobozian@ucalgary.ca) the Manager of Grant Development, as well as Research Grant Development Officers, Clint Westgard (chwestga@ucalgary.ca) and Brandi Povitz (brandi.povitz@ucalgary.ca). This team is your first point of contact and support for external funding agency applications. They are interested in helping our faculty members with any and all aspects of their research grant applications, so if you have a question please do not hesitate to reach out.
Note that all University of Calgary employees are required to complete core training as outlined in the “Health & Safety” tab, regardless of their involvement in research.