Christopher Brayton, South End

ATTENDING

Sandra Silver, South End

Thomas Moore, Associate Provost, BU

Jack Murphy, Co-Director, NEIDL

Carla Richards – Director of Community Relations, BUMC

Thomas Robbins, Executive Director of Public Safety and Chief of Police, BU

Ara Tahmassian,Associate Vice President, Research Compliance, BU

Kevin Tuohey, Executive Director of Operations, BUMC

Approval of Minutes

Minutes from the February 26 CLC meeting were tabled for review.

Update – NIH Blue Ribbon Panel

Mooregave an update on the NIH’s decision to create a Blue Ribbon Panel to conduct additional risk analyses for the NEIDL. The Blue Ribbon Panel is charged with developing a Scope of Work that identifies the infectious agents and hypothetical scenarios that should be studied. TheScope of Work will be contracted to a vendor. The NIH is currently interviewing several vendors. It is anticipated that the Scope of Work will be completed by June.

In addition, the Blue Ribbon Panel is expected hold a public meeting in Bostonon Friday, May 16where they will take questions from the audience followed by a tour of the NEIDL site by its members. The Blue Ribbon Panel may also request to meet with the CLC.

Silver inquired whether the Blue Ribbon Panel has a say in the selection of the vendor and whether there were any non-infectious disease individuals with sufficient expertise to appropriately conduct the type of analyses needed. Tahmassian noted that in his experience there are a handful of companies that specialize in this type of work.

Moore gave an update on the impact of the additional risk analyses on the timeline for opening of the NEIDL. Initially, the building was anticipated to open late fall 2008, with actual research beginning in summer 2009. The additional risk analyses may delay the start of the research somewhat, but BU is hoping to begin to use the facility for training, simulations, and safety testing as early as Jan, 2009 (no actual infectious disease research). By spending additional time on training BU hopes to be ready to begin actual research with little delay once final approvals needed are received.

Discussion - Draft - Transportation Plan

Robbins led discussion on the draft Transportation plan for the NEIDL. He cautioned members to remember that the document was not finalized; there are at least 6 or 7 areas that are still being developed and/or receiving feedback. These were identified in a memo from Robbins to the CLC which was mailed along with the draft Transportation Plan, three weeks ago.

Discussion was held on existing transportation standards and areas in which the current transportation plan for the NEIDL both incorporates these standards and adds additional layers of protection such as single source vendors, GPS tracking and enhanced background checks.

CLC Membership Terms

Richards mentioned that the deadline for recruitment of three CLC members was extended to Friday, May 23. Grove, whose term expires in May, resigned from the CLC last week and will not be attending future meetings. Richards added that as of the deadline date, less than a handful of applications had been received. Since the extension, the applicant pool is closer to ten at this point

10:30 a.m. Meeting Adjourned.