Research Skills Seminar Series – Dr Nik Zeps

“Ethical Principles – Demystifying Ethics for Research: How hard can it be?”

Overview: Ethics review is often regarded as a ‘hurdle’ to be struggled over. Instead, ethics should be regarded as an important element of the proper design and proposed conduct of a study that is embraced by researchers. This presentation will focus on how to empower researchers to think in ethical terms without needing to think of themselves as bioethicists.

Bio: Dr Zeps is director of research at St John of God HealthCare and is based at Subiaco Hospital. He is a cancer biologist and has had an amateur enthusiasm for ethics since 2001 that has seen him serve 6 years on the Australian Health Ethics Committee (NHMRC), serve continuously on an HREC for the last 14 years (currently UWA). He is the Australian member of the Ethics and Policy committee of the International Cancer Genome Project and the Steering Committee for the Global Summit of National Ethics Committees (WHO/UNESCO).