PLEASE NOTE: All applications for Biosafety approval must be made to the FACULTY-LEVEL committees. Faculty Biosafety Committees will escalate applications to the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC), as per the IBC Policy. Please consult the IBC Standard Operating Procedure for further information on this process.
Consistent with its commitment to the responsible conduct of research and teaching, the University of Cape Town (UCT) is committed to safe and ethical science in its use of potentially hazardous biological agents including recombinant or synthetic nucleic acid molecules. This is supported through university-wide and faculty-specific policies, Senate-level Committees, and Faculty-level Biosafety Committees (FBCs):
- To ensure safety, ethics, and compliance, the Senate-level committee has oversight of FBCs to which it may delegate reviews of specific projects or project types, and serves as the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) for UCT.
- The IBC is constituted to protect the interests of the university, researchers, the community and the environment, and to ensure that all activities involving potentially hazardous biological agents including recombinant or synthetic nucleic acid molecules complies with accepted international and national guidelines on biosafety and environmental ethics.
Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC)
- Terms of reference
- Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)
- Serviced by the Office of Research Integrity
Faculty-level Biosafety Committees (FBCs)
- Faculty of Health Sciences
- Faculty of Science: contact FBC Chair, Dr Thomas Oelgesschläger
- Engineering and the Built Environment: contact Science FBC Chair, Dr Thomas Oelgesschläger
Applications to the Faculty/Institutional Biosafety Committee (F/IBC)