First, you need to check and see if there are any restrictions placed upon you by your funding sources. In the United States, research projects backed by federal funds are generally required to be licensed with a permissive license. Other agencies in other countries may have different requirements.
Second, take a look at the licenses listed by the Open Source Initiative and you'll find a number of popular licenses that should meet your needs. The OSI FAQ on licenses should address some of your questions as well.
Third, consider having an entity created that all contributors can assign the copyright to. Remember that copyright is not the same as a license. Copyright is ownership of the code, licensing is how others can use the code. By having contributors assign their copyright to the project you'll be in a better position to handle any future licensing changes that may be required.
Finally, if you are concerned about the legal department review, stick with the more popular and benign licenses. Copyleft within the GPL attracts a lot of negative attention (some warranted, some not) from legal departments. BSD, MIT, eclipse, and Apache are generally benign but with varying degrees of restrictiveness. That's not an exhaustive list, but the well-known licenses are more likely to have already been reviewed by legal departments and will be more likely to receive approval.
