PRIM&R: Welcome to Research Ethics Reimagined, a podcast created by Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research, or PRIM&R. Here, we talk with scientists, researchers, bioethicists, and some of the leading minds exploring the new frontiers of science. Join us to examine research ethics in the 21st century and learn why it matters to you.
Dan McLean: Welcome to Research Ethics Reimagined. I’m your host, Dan McLean.
Catherine Batsford: And I’m Catherine Batsford.
Dan McLean: Today we’re joined by our PRIMR25 Pillar Award recipients, Lisa Chuba and Alison Pohl, and by the first PRIMR25 Outstanding Student Poster Award recipient, Leah Huff. We’re excited to talk with both established and emerging voices in research ethics.
Lisa and Alison are research compliance monitors at UConn Health. Lisa also serves as Postapproval Monitoring Coordinator, and Alison serves as IACUC administrator. Their poster is titled “Engaging the Research Community Through Outreach to Promote Animal Welfare and Compliance.”
Leah is a senior at the University of Virginia majoring in history and American studies. Her winning poster is titled “What If Consent Worked Like a Good Lesson Plan? Optimizing Participant Understanding in the Ongoing Consent Process.”
Leah, you’re the first student poster award recipient. Can you tell us how you became interested in research ethics and what your poster is about?
Leah Huff: Thank you for having me. I got involved in research ethics through UVA’s Internship Placement Program. I applied to work with the Human Research Protection Program (HRPP) and was placed there because I knew I wanted a career related to research and supporting people conducting studies.
My poster, “What If Consent Worked Like a Good Lesson Plan?,” looks at how we can make the consent process more engaging, adaptive, and respectful of participant autonomy. I surveyed more than 250 university students about their learning preferences and connected those results to adaptive consent models, such as dynamic and iterative consent.
The idea is that if we tailor consent to different learning styles—using visuals, discussion, or periodic check-ins—participants can make better informed decisions throughout a study. I wanted to reimagine consent as an ongoing educational process that builds understanding, trust, and respect, rather than a one-time form signed at the start of a study.
Dan McLean: When you were surveying students on campus, how familiar were they with the idea of research consent?
Leah Huff: We posted signs around campus and invited students to complete a short survey—about 15 questions. People at UVA are generally pretty familiar with the concept of consent, so I didn’t have to do a lot of basic explanation. The bigger surprise for me was in the results: even though many of our classes are lecture or discussion based, a lot of students said they really like project-based learning. That was interesting and helped me think about consent in more interactive, participatory ways.
Catherine Batsford: Alison and Lisa, you’re coming at things from a different angle—working with established investigators rather than students. Can you tell us about your poster and the work behind it? And congratulations again on the Pillar Award—PRIM&R receives a lot of submissions.
Alison Pohl: Thank you.
Lisa Chuba: Thank you.
When I started in the IACUC office in 2024, I was asked to relaunch our postapproval monitoring program. At UConn Health we call these visits PAWS reviews—Postapproval Animal Welfare Support—because we are the Huskies.
Initially, these reviews were very tense. Labs were defensive and resistant. It felt like an “us versus them” dynamic.
Alison Pohl: Our titles—Research Compliance Monitor I and II—didn’t help. They sounded adversarial. We started asking, Does compliance have to feel so serious and punitive?
We wanted to build genuine, collaborative relationships between the IACUC and the research community. We believed that better relationships would lead to better compliance and ultimately better animal care.
Lisa Chuba: So we launched an outreach program. We shifted from being perceived as “the people who show up to catch problems” to partners who help labs succeed within the regulations. That culture change is what our poster describes and why we wanted to share our experience with others.
Catherine Batsford: Did anything surprise you as you worked on the poster?
Alison Pohl: The first surprise was how quickly it came together once we decided to do it. I ran to Lisa’s office after seeing the PRIMR25 call for abstracts and said, “Do you want to do a poster?” She’d never done one before; I had.
Lisa Chuba: The hardest part was not the content—we agreed on most of that—but the layout. We’re both type A, so everything had to line up and flow just right. Alison tends to be more wordy; I lean toward bullet points, so we had to strike a balance that would be engaging and easy to read.
Dan McLean: Leah, what was most challenging about translating educational theory into research ethics practice?
Leah Huff: The hardest part was shifting my perspective. I usually think like a researcher, but this project required me to think like a teacher designing a lesson plan. I had to ask, How would an instructor structure consent if they approached it as a learning experience?
Writing the poster and the survey from that point of view—imagining what educators or investigators would need to see and do—was challenging at first, especially since it was my first time going through the IRB process as a principal investigator.
Catherine Batsford: Lisa and Alison, you mentioned working with principal investigators and research staff. Who are you typically interacting with, and why do you think there was initial animosity?
Alison Pohl: We work with a full spectrum of people. Principal investigators are usually PhDs or MDs. Then there are postdocs, graduate students, and career lab staff with bachelor’s or master’s degrees.
PIs tend to be very direct and focused on what they want to accomplish. There is a long-standing perception that the IACUC is there to slow them down or block their work. People sometimes assume the committee’s goal is to catch them doing something wrong.
That is not our role. Our job is to make sure their work can move forward in accordance with the Animal Welfare Act and other regulations. We had to communicate that we are there to support them and protect animal welfare, not to stand in their way.
Dan McLean: Leah is a senior and thinking about next steps. Lisa and Alison, how did you each end up in these roles, and what advice would you offer her?
Lisa Chuba: My path has been varied. I started in academia, then moved into pharmaceutical research doing hands-on animal work. I came to UConn Health about 18 years ago and worked as a veterinary technician for 17 years before moving into the IACUC office.
When I showed up in labs as a vet tech, people were happy to see me. When I showed up as an IACUC coordinator, they scattered. That contrast really shaped how I thought about our outreach work and the need to shift culture.
Alison Pohl: My undergraduate and graduate degrees are in medical microbiology. I worked in a clinical human laboratory in San Francisco and eventually moved into biotech. A job posting for someone to do “medical microbiology” turned out to be work with mice rather than people, and that pulled me into animal research.
When my husband and I moved back to Connecticut, I joined UConn Health and eventually moved into the IACUC office. I’ve been there about 22 years. Having hands-on animal research experience has been invaluable in reviewing protocols and supporting investigators.
Catherine Batsford: Leah, your project involved people, not animals. Did you go through the IRB at UVA?
Leah Huff: Yes. For the survey, I had to submit a protocol to the IRB. The process took a few weeks. If you’ve submitted before, you know it’s a lot of back-and-forth—submit, receive feedback, revise, resubmit.
Because it was my first IRB submission, getting comfortable with the language, procedures, and expectations took time. I was fortunate to work with a mentor in the HRPP who guided me through it.
Dan McLean: You’re also serving as a student member of the IRB, right?
Leah Huff: Yes. I serve on UVA’s Social and Behavioral Sciences IRB. I review studies, participate in discussions, and help assess whether studies meet ethical and regulatory standards. It’s been a valuable experience as an undergraduate to see how the review process works from the inside.
Catherine Batsford: Lisa and Alison, do you see much overlap between human subjects review and IACUC work?
Alison Pohl: There is not a lot of direct overlap, but we interact around protocols that involve human-derived materials. For example, if a PI is implanting human samples into animals, we need to know how those samples were obtained and whether IRB review was required. We coordinate with the human subjects side to make sure all applicable regulations are met.
Dan McLean: If attendees remember just one thing from your posters, what do you hope it will be?
Alison Pohl: From our poster, I hope they see that compliance does not have to be dry or adversarial. The laws are prescriptive, and they must be followed, but there is room in how you communicate and engage.
You can teach people without being didactic. You can use games, contests, and informal events and still convey serious information. That approach has improved our program and helped build trust between the IACUC and the research community.
Leah Huff: From my poster, I hope people walk away with the idea that consent does not have to be static. It can be relational, engaging, and empowering.
When we treat participants as partners with different learning preferences and communication needs, consent becomes something that builds trust rather than just a form to sign.
Dan McLean: Leah, you mentioned “dynamic consent,” and we’ve also talked on this podcast about tools like AI that might support understanding. Did your project touch on those ideas?
Leah Huff: My work focused mainly on flexibility and accessibility in the consent process, rather than AI specifically, but AI could easily fit into dynamic or adaptive consent models.
Dynamic consent is about meeting participants’ needs throughout a study—allowing for ongoing communication, updates, and opportunities to revisit choices. AI tools could help create tailored materials or make consent information more accessible, especially for participants who are remote or prefer different formats. That is an area I would be interested in exploring more in the future.
Dan McLean: Lisa and Alison, what advice would you offer institutions that want to strengthen their animal welfare outreach?
Lisa Chuba: First, don’t be afraid to fail. Try things. Host a lunchtime learning session, create a newsletter, run a contest, or build a game. Some ideas won’t work, and that’s fine. You learn and adjust.
Alison Pohl: Our ultimate goal is animal welfare. Everyone—investigators, staff, and IACUC members—wants animals to be well cared for and research to be done correctly.
Trust is essential. We started small, with simple policy posters featuring a small graphic and a QR code linking to the relevant policy. We posted them in facilities. People noticed, appreciated them, and even started suggesting topics. They helped us do our job by spreading the word.
From there, we got more ambitious: a Family Feud–style game between labs, and most recently a Jeopardy!-style game that pitted institutional leaders and veterinarians against each other on animal care and compliance questions. These events were nerve-wracking to organize but incredibly effective. People learned, had fun, and started seeking us out with questions instead of avoiding us.
Catherine Batsford: Do you think greater transparency about animal research—for example, on campus or online—could help build trust?
Alison Pohl: Yes. Our IACUC webpage is open to the public, and I pushed hard for that. We post our policies, link to laws and regulations, and describe alternatives to animal use and to painful procedures.
We have been contacted by high school students working on projects who found our site and wanted to learn more. That kind of openness matters. While many institutions prefer to keep animal research information behind firewalls, I think that in today’s environment, transparency is essential for trust.
Lisa Chuba: We also tried to reach groups within our own hospital who may not realize animal research is happening in the same building where they work. For example, we wanted to give a brief presentation to nurses about the regulations and welfare safeguards in place. Scheduling and workload made it difficult, but it underscored how many people—even in health care—do not realize that the medications they administer were tested in animals.
Dan McLean: We’ve also been talking about new approach methodologies and nonanimal models. What are you seeing at UConn Health?
Alison Pohl: There is real potential in nonanimal models. Ten years ago, we did not have organ-on-a-chip systems or some of the sophisticated organoid models we have now. PIs are required to consider alternatives, and many do a lot of preliminary work with cell cultures, computer modeling, and organoids to reduce the number of animals used.
However, the body is incredibly complex. For many questions—especially those regulated under good laboratory practice requirements—there are still legal and scientific reasons to conduct studies in animals. New approach methodologies can reduce animal use and improve study design, but for now they do not replace animals entirely.
Dan McLean: Leah, do many of your peers see human subjects research and IRB work as a career path?
Leah Huff: Not many, especially outside STEM. Many students don’t think about IRBs, even though every university has one. Some political science or social science majors get involved through distinguished majors programs or capstone projects that require IRB-reviewed studies.
That is how a lot of people discover this world: they submit a study with a faculty mentor, then consider an internship, and from there may move into full-time positions in research ethics or compliance. That is similar to my path—I applied through the university and discovered how much I enjoyed the work once I was immersed in it.
Catherine Batsford: This has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you all for sharing your work and your perspectives.
Alison Pohl: Thank you.
Lisa Chuba: Thank you.
Leah Huff: Thank you—it was great to be here.
Dan McLean: Congratulations again on your awards and on the impact you are having in research ethics and oversight.
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