Familiar Faces:
Addressing the Challenge of Simultaneous and Sequential Study Enrollment

Stephanie Collins Reed, PhD, CIP

Stephanie Collins Reed, PhD, CIP, is an assistant professor of Clinical Neurobiology and an IRB protocol analyst in the Psychiatry Department of Columbia University at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She has a PhD in Experimental Psychology from Boston University and over 20 years of research experience.  She has spent the past 12 years conducting behavioral and biomedical human subjects’ research and her research focus has been on sex differences and women’s issues in drug use disorders.  She has been an investigator on seven federally-funded grants, has over 30 publications, and has been involved in approximately 60 poster and oral presentations at a variety of research conferences.  In addition to her ongoing research, Dr. Reed has spent the past three years as an IRB protocol analyst, which has given her a newfound appreciation for, and understanding of, the ethical conduct of human subjects’ research.  Most recently, she presented a workshop on Managing Subject Complaints with her co-presenter, Dr. Wilets, at the 2014 and 2015 PRIM&R Advancing Ethical Research conferences. She enjoys having the opportunity to use her investigator and IRB roles to better align the missions of those conducting research and those providing ethical oversight of research.

Ilene Wilets, PhD, CIP

Ilene Wilets, PhD, CIP, is an assistant professor of medical psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. She has a PhD in Psychology, with a specialization in Measurement, Evaluation, and Applied Statistics from the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and received a Certificate in Bioethics and Medical Humanities from the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Bioethics. 

Dr. Wilets serves as executive director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute IRB and the Institute's Program for Human Subjects Research. In addition, she is on faculty with the Columbia University Program in Bioethics, and co-teaches a core course in Research Ethics. Before coming to Columbia, Dr. Wilets was on faculty in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. At Mount Sinai, she served as an IRB chair, assistant director of the Program for the Protection of Human Subjects, and research subject advocate for the General Clinical Research Center.

Her interests involve decision-making for research participation, the communication of study risk and benefit, voluntariness, mental health research, and global health research. She is a long-standing and grateful member of PRIM&R, and is active as an educator, mentor and volunteer.