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Summary of FY2010 Human Subjects Database


Contributing Research Facilities

There are 32 research organizations that reported data included in this year's database. Eleven of these are DOE sites and 21 are non-DOE sites (such as hospitals, universities, or research institutes) receiving DOE funding or other sites conducting studies related to DOE activities.

The statistics presented below only represent active projects in the HSRD. Active projects are those that had current fiscal-year IRB approval, even if they received no funding or reported no human subject activity in the current fiscal year. Inactive projects include those that were temporarily suspended for any reason. Other sections of the HSRD include data on all projects, both active as well as inactive projects, reported by individual sites and research organizations.

Number of Active Research Projects
(Total Number of Projects: 315)

 Research OrganizationProjectsPercent
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 60 19%
Brookhaven National Laboratory 41 13%
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education 33 10%
Los Alamos National Laboratory 26 8%
Sandia National Laboratories 25 8%
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 23 7%
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory 22 7%
Oak Ridge National Laboratory 20 6%
MIND Research Network 16 5%
  Others 4916%
Pie Chart Number of Research Projects
  • Eighty-three percent of the projects were conducted at DOE facilities, and 17% were conducted at non-DOE facilities.
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) had the largest number of active projects with 60, followed by Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) with 41.
  • Seven research organizations reported 19 projects as being international. The Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF), in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, which studies health impacts of radiation exposure in atomic bomb survivors, reported the largest number of foreign subjects.
  • Eight research organizations reported 14 projects as part of the Former Worker Medical Screening Program (FWP). Organizations with FWP projects include six universities and two research labs.
Funding for Human Subjects Research
(Total Research Funding: $103,269,442)

 Research OrganizationFunding Percent
Radiation Effects Research Foundation $15,000,000 15%
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory $14,196,105 14%
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory $13,960,524 14%
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education $10,359,533 10%
Sandia National Laboratories $8,963,000 9%
Queens College of the City University of New York $8,429,709 8%
Los Alamos National Laboratory $6,099,416 6%
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory $5,587,000 5%
Oak Ridge National Laboratory $4,121,811 4%
  Others $16,552,34516%
Pie Chart Funding for Human Subjects Research
  • Funding for human subjects research includes only those projects receiving federal funding. Funding from private sources is not included.
  • Funding from the DOE dropped from $80 million in FY2009 to $57 million in FY2010. This drop was due primarily to a number of high-dollar volume DOE projects ending in FY2009, as well as lesser adjustments among other DOE projects in FY2010. Funding from other federal sources stayed fairly constant at $49 million.
  • International projects, including the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) project, received $22 million in funding. RERF studies, funded by the DOE with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, accounted for 69% of international project funding and 21% of total funding.
  • Former Worker Medical Screening Program (FWP) projects received $22 million in funding from the DOE.

Number of Human Subjects
(Total Human Subjects: 1,075,428)

 Research OrganizationHuman SubjectsPercent
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 410,012 38%
Oak Ridge National Laboratory 355,192 33%
Radiation Effects Research Foundation 120,000 11%
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education 107,758 10%
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 54,239 5%
  Others 28,2273%
Pie Chart Number of Human Subjects
  • A total of 1,075,969 human subjects were involved in DOE-funded, site-related, or worker-related projects.
  • About 49% of human subjects were reported by DOE facilities, and 51% were reported by non-DOE facilities.
  • The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) had the largest number with over 410,000 human subjects, distributed among seven projects.  The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) had the next largest number of human subjects (over 355,000), with 350,000 in one records analysis project.
  • The number of human subjects in international projects decreased by 25% from 161,804 in FY2009 to 121,983 in FY2010.  One project that ended in FY2009 at the University of Illinois Chicago accounted for the decrease of 40,000 human subjects in international projects.
  • Human subjects participation in Former Worker Medical Screening Program (FWP) projects dropped by 81% from 68,111 in FY2009 to 13,204 in FY2010.  This difference is attributable mostly to the FWP project at the University of Washington-Harborview Medical Center that ended in FY2009 and involved over 54,000 subjects.