Shannon Lunt has joined the University of Oklahoma as the Assistant Vice President, Research Integrity Officer in the Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships. In this new role for OU Norman, Lunt will lead initiatives to foster responsible conduct of research and promote a culture of compliance and integrity. Her responsibilities include promoting and assuring the ethical conduct of research across the university’s Norman campus, including Norman programs in Tulsa.
“Integrity in research is fundamental to the proper conduct of the academic research enterprise. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has released new policy guidelines aimed at ensuring and strengthening integrity in research across all Federal agencies, and this appointment will help strengthen OU’s own approach to and compliance with federal guidelines,” said OU Vice President for Research and Partnerships Tomás Díaz de la Rubia. “As our inaugural RIO, Shannon brings a record of success facilitating innovative, data-driven change to ensure equitable, reliable, and fiscally responsible research operations. She will apply her deep expertise to innovate and standardize administrative and business processes to improve organizational capacity to ensure the highest of ethical standards for research at OU.”
While promoting research integrity and the ethical conduct of scholarly research through education is a significant part of this role, the Research Integrity Officer is ultimately responsible for receiving and handling allegations of scholarly, scientific, and research misconduct, a responsibility required by federal agencies as a condition for providing OU financial research support.
“I look forward to partnering with faculty and staff to not only meet our federal obligations for compliance but to create a foundation of support for OU’s next generation of research exemplars,” Lunt said.
Lunt brings more than 20 years practicing in the complex research arena, most recently having served as the Assistant Vice President for Research at Southern Methodist University. During her tenure at SMU, she provided oversight of the entire research enterprise, including federal and nonfederal grants, intellectual property, research contracts, and research compliance. She also facilitated a 53% and 23% increase in research awards and successful grant proposal submissions, respectively.
Lunt received her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in psychobiology and animal science at Texas A&M University and has dozens of peer-reviewed publications in the fields of psychoneuroimmunology, immunology, and molecular biology. She established a foundation for conducting clinical and basic research with the highest of ethical standards while a research associate at the University of Michigan Medical School where she supported multi-institutional, multimillion dollar federal programs.
As the principal investigator at the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research for the largest biorepository in North Texas, Lunt managed a core facility of a $60M grant funded by the National Institutes of Health, which produced biological collections kits, processed samples for bench research and repository storage, and maintained international and FDA regulatory documents for over 100 sponsor-initiated clinical trials and basic research projects.
