Builders Group

A peer working group for research administrators who are actively building AI into their offices. Some members work alongside IT teams; others are piecing it together on their own. What unites the group is the work of implementation itself: system integration, workflow design, automation, and deployment at enterprise scale. (This is a forum about building, not about personal chatbots or general AI literacy.)

Meetings run on Zoom every two months, on the last Tuesday of the month. Members submit questions, challenges, and projects they want to showcase, and the group upvotes the submissions that surface for each agenda. The work spans the full research lifecycle, from pre-award to scholarly communication.

This work is new and the people doing it are scattered. Our goal is to help practitioners find each other without requiring anyone to join a particular regional organization first. The Canadian Association of Research Administrators (CARA) and the Society of Research Administrators International (SRAI) support this group through promotion and awareness. No association membership is required to participate.

Hosted by James Shelley, AI in Research Facilitator, Office of Research Services, Western University, Canada.