Ethics@WIS

The Weizmann Institute of Science places prime importance on the ability to create and maintain an environment that encourages the highest standards of excellence, ethics and integrity, and compliance with the requirements of research sponsors and national and international legislation.

This website provides links to the relevant Institute policies, procedures, guidelines, laws and regulations pertaining to research, to which all faculty, staff and students of the Weizmann Institute are expected to adhere in the conduct of their activities, with the aim of promoting responsible conduct of research.

• Code of Ethical Conduct

  • The Weizmann Institute has a long-standing commitment to the highest standards of ethics, as put forth in the Code of Ethical Conduct.

• Feinberg Graduate School Code of Ethics

  • The Feinberg Graduate School Code of Ethics defines a code of standards which all students and post-doctoral fellows are expected to uphold. Any failure to fulfill the rules of the Code will result in disciplinary measures by the Graduate School.

• Human Subjects/Specimens Research

  • The Institute is committed to providing a rigorous and independent ethical review process for research involving human subjects or specimens, including work with human stem cells (according to the guidelines published by the US National Academy of Sciences) and educational research involving collection of data from human subjects. To this end, the Institute has established an Institutional Review Board (IRB).

• Animal Research

  • According to Israeli law, institutions that use laboratory animals for research or instructional purposes must establish an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) to oversee and evaluate all aspects of the institution's animal care and use program. The Institute's IACUC is certified by the Israeli Ministry of Health’s Council for Experimentation on Animals since 1997, has a current certification by the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW), and is fully accredited by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC) since 2007.

• Biosafety

  • Research involving recombinant DNA and gene transfer, or hazardous biomaterials, falls under the purview of the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC)
  • Research making use of infectious agents is regulated by the Institutional Committee for Research Using Infectious Agents (ICRUIA)

• Safety

  • The Institute, together with the Ministry of the Environment, has embarked upon an ambitious program to research, improve, innovate and implement Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) practices and technologies, with the goal of inspiring and educating employees and visitors, and serving as an international example for a safe and environmentally sustainable scientific research center.

• Compliance Training

  • In addition to courses offered by the Feinberg Graduate School, the Weizmann Institute subscribes to the CITI Program. All Weizmann personnel can freely register on the CITI website to complete and be certified in compliance training modules covering Human Subjects Research, Institutional Review Boards (IRB), Good Clinical Practice (GCP), Information Privacy and Security (IPS), Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR), Conflicts of Interest (COI), Laboratory Animal Research (IACUC), and Public Health Research.