1/12/2026 Jeni Bushman
A multi-disciplinary team from the Coordinated Science Laboratory has received a grant from the Office of Research Integrity to examine and reform harmful research practices.
Written by Jeni Bushman
A cross-disciplinary team from The Grainger College of Engineering has been awarded a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to investigate and address the effects of detrimental research practices.
Awarded to co-PIs C.K. Gunsalus, research professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory and Director of the National Center for Principled Leadership and Research Ethics (NCPRE), and Julia Briskin, Director of Assessment at NCPRE, the two-year grant will support evidence-based initiatives to understand and improve how researchers’ work environments influence their behavior and research practices.
“Environments affect how people behave in terms of research integrity,” Gunsalus said. “And the best way to draw attention to issues with university working environments is with empirical data.”
Using existing large-scale surveys of R1 institutions, administered through NCPRE’s custom-built secure Results Analysis Engine (RAE), Gunsalus and Briskin’s aim is two-fold: to test and validate a comprehensive model that links researchers’ social and emotional skills, interpersonal climate, and institutional culture with harmful — or ethical — research practices, and to develop guidance documents that will help improve research climates.
The Illinois team’s project aligns closely with ORI’s core mission of supporting education and outreach activities that facilitate responsible conduct of research and promote research integrity.
“I’m excited about doing work that can potentially make the research enterprise better,” said Briskin, a trained psychologist who specializes in interpersonal relationships. “When scientific misconduct calls research into question, it threatens trust in the scientific enterprise and in science as a whole.”
The project’s first year will focus on analyzing data previously collected from 5,000 North American graduate students, postdocs, research staff, and faculty to identify indicators in work environments associated with either ethical or detrimental research practices. The data will be compiled using the RAE’s pre-existing nationwide database, which allows institutions to compare their results with other campus departments, and with similar departments at other institutions.
“The quality and value of a national and international benchmarking database is that it gives you a data-informed way to understand things about your environment,” Gunsalus said. “This tool allows institutions to learn about good things already happening that they can promote, and it also highlights areas that can be refined to make a healthier workplace.”
The second and final year of the initiative aims to produce guidance documents based on its results, equipping institutions with tangible tools to reduce harmful research practices.
“Our Results Analysis Engine was custom built by Illinois Grainger engineers to support understanding of an institution’s research climate,” Briskin said. “It is the vehicle through which we deploy these assessments, and its strength lies in its ability to display results in many different ways for different audiences.”
Briskin and Gunsalus hope their validated assessment tools, deployed through the RAE, will lead to actionable paths that help improve institutional work culture and scientific integrity as a whole.
“The most important thing at any institution is the people,” Gunsalus said. “If you can find and ameliorate practices or environments that are dispiriting, contributing to turnover or making people more stressed than the world already is, you’ve done a good thing. Improving a working culture improves quality of work, retention, and morale, and that’s what universities are all about: supporting the best, highest quality research and science that can be done.”
Illinois Grainger Engineering Affiliations
C.K. Gunsalus is a Research Professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory. She is also the Director of the National Center for Principled Leadership & Research Ethics and a Professor Emerita of Business.
Julia Briskin is a Research Data Scientist in the Coordinated Science Laboratory. She is also the Director of Assessment at the National Center for Principled Leadership & Research Ethics.