Biomedical Research Alliance of NY (BRANY), a national organization providing support services to research institutions and investigators in a wide variety of therapeutic areas, medical devices, biologic and diagnostic trials, has acquired the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative Program (CITI), a provider of online research ethics education to the research community.

 “The University of Miami, since its founding of CITI, has remained committed to fostering the development of this program, making it an international center of excellence in online research ethics education and training,” said Thomas LeBlanc, Ph.D., executive vice president and provost of University of Miami. “We are pleased to see the continuation of this commitment with BRANY, and we look forward to continued collaborations with the CITI program, BRANY and its owner institutions.”

Like BRANY, which was founded by four academic research institutions, CITI’s founding in 2000 started as a collaboration between academic and commercial research centers from around the U.S.  Experts from the original 10 organizations comprised the first group of content developers for the CITI Program. The initial focus was on human subjects research (HSR) protections in biomedicine and social sciences. CITI has since expanded to include course content in good clinical practice (GCP), the responsible conduct of research (RCR), biosafety and biosecurity, clinical trial billing compliance, conflicts of interest, disaster planning for the research enterprise and information privacy and security, to name a few.

“CITI’s mission to provide educational opportunities to the entire research team fosters research integrity and promotes the public’s trust in the global research enterprise. The CITI Program’s commitment to quality research practice is in perfect alignment with BRANY’s mission of providing quality service to the research community,” said Paul Braunschweiger, Ph.D., director of the CITI program.