Universities, as partners in the national research enterprise, are required by federal regulations to establish specific research committees to ensure the ethical and safe conduct of research and certain other scholarly activities. The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, the three Institutional Review Boards, and the Institutional Biosafety Committee have been established to oversee activities involving, respectively, vertebrate animal subjects, human research subjects, and recombinant DNA (rDNA). These federally mandated faculty committees are administered and supported by the Office of Research Integrity Assurance, which reports to the Vice President for Research. Procedures for obtaining committee approval can be found at www.researchintegrity.gatech.edu.