As the nation’s largest public research university, the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) aims to catalyze, support and safeguard U-M research and scholarship activity.
The Office of the Vice President for Research oversees a variety of interdisciplinary units that collaborate with faculty, staff, students and external partners to catalyze, support and safeguard research and scholarship activity.
ORSP manages pre-award and some post-award research activity for U-M. We review contracts for sponsored projects applying regulatory, statutory and organizational knowledge to balance the university's mission, the sponsor's objectives, and the investigator's intellectual pursuits.
Ethics and compliance in research covers a broad range of activity from general guidelines about conducting research responsibly to specific regulations governing a type of research (e.g., human subjects research, export controls, conflict of interest).
eResearch is U-M's site for electronic research administration. Access: Regulatory Management (for IRB or IBC rDNA applications); Proposal Management (eRPM) for the e-routing, approval, and submission of proposals (PAFs) and Unfunded Agreements (UFAs) to external entities); and Animal Management (for IACUC protocols and ULAM).
Sponsored Programs manages the post-award financial activities of U-M's research enterprise and other sponsored activities to ensure compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws as well as sponsor regulations. The Office of Contract Administration (OCA) is also part of the Office of Finance - Sponsored Programs.
A Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) is a legal contract that outlines terms of use (e.g., intellectual property rights) for materials provided to another investigator. Incoming MTAs and outgoing MTAs involving U-M are negotiated by Innovation Partnerships and are completed via an Unfunded Agreement (UFA) in the eResearch Proposal Management system.
