By SUSAN JONES

Rob Rutenbar was talking about artificial intelligence when he said at a recent Senate Research committee meeting that, “the world is moving very, very fast,” but the same could probably be said about many other issues affecting the research community.

Rutenbar, senior vice chancellor for research, and others gave updates on NIH rules, AI and more at the January committee meeting.

AI at APLU

“AI is everything everywhere all the time right now,” Rutenbar said. He recently led a session on AI at the Association of Public & Land-Grant Universities (APLU) annual meeting, and, “It was mobbed,” he said.

Since then, he’s had a ton of invitations to talk about AI-related issues, including with a Microsoft customer engagement team about “all of the AI tech that Microsoft will be adding to the side of all of its products and making available for a price. … The technology is likely coming soon to a software platform near you that you know.”

Pitt already has a relationship with Microsoft that provides early access to some of the tools in the cognitive services portfolio, Rutenbar said. His office has been using some of those tools to try to answer a question they get frequently: “Can you help me find someone working on X at Pitt.”

This question arises in many contexts, but particularly among researchers trying to find a partner with a different expertise to help on a project.

Rutenbar said he and interim Provost Joe McCarthy began compiling an inventory last semester of what people are doing across campus with AI. He said it’s not a comprehensive inventory, but more of a sampling, and they’ve found many interesting uses just of ChatGPT. There also are several new training sessions on this topic being offered by the Teaching Center.

Federal regulations

Bill Yates, vice chancellor for research protections, said the Biden administration is taking a closer look at the “march-in” clause in the Bayh-Dole Act that allows the government to invalidate agreements between universities and companies on commercialization research funded by federal grants, under certain conditions. The government is particularly looking at ways to control high drug prices.

“So if the cure to cancer is invented at Pitt, and we license it to a drug company, and then the drug company wants to sell it for a billion dollars a dose, the government could come in and say, ‘No, no, no, that's not appropriate. We're breaking your deal,’” Yates said. “Universities are very afraid about this because we don't know how far it would go and how that would affect our licensing of wonderful things that we're discovering here.”

Yates said he also expects new research security guidelines, which were open for comment last year, to be released soon. Pitt was involved with the University of Pennsylvania in a project to develop part of the research security training modules, which are already available on the National Science Foundation website. Pitt helped develop module 3.

Environment, Health and Safety reviews

Doug Reed, an associate professor immunology, said he’s had reports that protocol renewals were being held up by delayed Environment, Health & Safety reviews. He said one researcher “was worried that his protocol was going to expire, and the animals would be confiscated.”

“A number of us had noticed that EH&S reviews were taking a considerable amount of time, and we weren’t sure why that was,” he said.

Molly Stitt-Fischer, director of Pitt’s Environmental Health and Safety Department, said her office did fall very behind in processing reviews of Institutional Animal Care and Use (IACUC) protocols in October and November 2023, and some of the impact carried over into December.

One of the key reviewers transferred to another Pitt office, and even though they had a plan in place to handle the departure and get someone new, delays still occurred. She thanked the IACUC office for helping to triage the protocol reviews so the most deadline sensitive were handled first. Stitt-Fischer said they added a new reviewer in December, and throughout January the review times were getting shorter and should be back up to speed by now.

“We’re becoming more efficient and effective,” she said. “And our goal is always to collaborate with investigators and groups so that we can support the safe conduct of all of your cutting-edge research.”

Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.

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