Speakers and Panelists

Pearl O’Rourke, MD

Pearl is retired from Partners HealthCare, where since 2001 she served as Director of the Human Research Protection Program with responsibility for the system of human subject protections for over 9,000 protocols conducted by investigators at Partners hospitals.  She was also the chairman of the ESCRO Committee. 

Trained in pediatric critical care she worked as a pediatric critical care physician at the Children's Hospital, Boston and at the Children’s Hospital, University of Washington in Seattle.  At both institutions she was also the director of Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) Program.

In 1995–1996, Dr. O’Rourke was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy fellow and worked for Senator Edward Kennedy: following this fellowship, she became the Deputy Director of the Office of Science Policy in the Office of the Director at the NIH where she worked on issues such as privacy, gene therapy (transfer) embryonic stem cells and genetic discrimination.

She remains an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School where she is active in teaching research ethics.  She is a co-director of the Ethics and Regulatory Core for the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory and is also the board chair for an Equine Center in Connecticut.

Nichelle Cobb

Dr. Cobb is the senior advisor for strategic initiatives for the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs and previously a site visitor for AAHRPP and member of AAHRPP’s Council on Accreditation. Prior to joining AAHRPP, she was the Director of the Health Sciences Institutional Review Boards for 16 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has worked with IRBs for 20+ years. Nichelle has been involved in single IRB work for more than a decade and was instrumental in the development of the SMART IRB Master Reliance Agreement and serves as a senior advisor and ambassador for SMART IRB, a federally funded project that supports the implementation of single IRB. In addition, Dr. Cobb is a member of the SMART IRB harmonization steering committee and has co-led working groups to harmonize IRB and Human Research Protection Program practices, such as for reportable events, ancillary reviews, continuing review, and local context. Dr. Cobb also has been a member and co-chair of the Workshop and Didactic Subcommittee for the Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research annual Advancing Ethics in Research Conference, contributed to the third edition of "IRB Management and Function," authored academic articles on single IRB and informed consent, and developed and taught PRIM&R courses for new IRB administrators and about the common rule.