Faculty Update: Migration of Institutional Review Board activities to PERA

Migration of Institutional Review Board (IRB) activities to the Purdue Excellence in Research Administration (PERA) platform is underway. The PERA-IRB module will go live Monday (Oct. 27).

With the module’s launch fast approaching, the IRB team is highlighting how the new PERA-IRB module will benefit research faculty, sharing important next steps and addressing questions received from researchers in recent weeks.

The team also announces the creation of new bodies — a PERA faculty support team and faculty advisory committee— to optimize support and to collect feedback from PERA-IRB users.

Time-saving benefits of the new PERA-IRB module

Replacing the current Cayuse software, the new PERA-IRB module will provide researchers with more efficient, transparent and simplified user experiences for the completion of IRB protocols. The time-saving benefits include:

• Faster turnaround: protocols go through fewer steps for revisions and researchers can see all revision comments in one place rather than having to review multiple sections 

• Less back-and-forth: IRB staff can see shared project data directly in the system, leading to fewer requests for documents or clarifications from researchers

• Automatic precheck before submission: built-in validation catches missing information early (including CITI certification), reducing the resubmit-and-wait cycle

• Single dashboard: researchers can see all compliance actions and upcoming expirations in one place, rather than hunting across platforms or email threads

• Transparency: the review process is fully visible in one place, allowing researchers to know exactly where a protocol sits in the workflow, who touched it last and what was changed

Steps during transition from Cayuse to PERA

To ensure a smooth transition to PERA, it is necessary to first phase out activities on the Cayuse platform. Importantly:

• All protocol submissions that were finalized in Cayuse by Oct. 10 will transition automatically to PERA on the go-live date.

• Purdue will retain full access to Cayuse through March 31, 2026, after which we will have read-only access for an additional three years through March 2029.

• IRB submissions not finalized in Cayuse as of Oct. 10 will need to be recreated in PERA after Oct. 27. Access to Cayuse will remain, making it easier for faculty to build their new protocols in PERA. Also, researchers wishing to make modifications to migrated IRB submissions can do so in PERA after Oct. 27. Questions about managing submissions during this transition can be emailed to irb@purdue.edu.

• The new PERA faculty support team can provide individualized assistance to any faculty member needing support. Information about this support team will be shared soon with deans.

• The PERA data team has completed transfer test runs with validation after each run.

• During the migration, Jamie Mohler (AVP for research compliance) will be available to receive any adverse reports directly at jlmohler@purdue.edu or 765-496-6071. Faculty may also continue to use Cayuse for the time being, or email irb@purdue.edu. (After the migration, PERA itself will also house an additional reporting tool/mechanism.)

Available resources

Research teams are encouraged to leverage several resources to assist with questions including the PERA website and PERA help desk. They can also email questions about IRB to irb@purdue.edu.