Conflicts of Interest are the natural outgrowth of successful research, collaboration, and commercialization efforts. The Conflict of Interest team, in conjunction with the faculty-led Conflict of Interest Review Committee and Business Conflict of Interest team, is charged with effectively managing conflicts of interest.

Disclosures

At Georgia Tech, we provide ample opportunities to disclose your external activities. Here are some:

The COI Office is pleased to announce that, with the dedicated efforts of the ServiceNow Development Team, the ServiceNow COI portal has been revised to improve user experience, effective August 27th. 

Here's whats new:

  • Forms now display questions based on the type of external activity being reported.
  • Informational help text has been added to several questions for clarity.

Approvers will now see:

  • A summary of each form, instead of the full form.
  • All forms submitted by their direct reports on their home page.
  • Approvers can either approve or reject activities from the system notification email, or from the COI portal.
  • Note: There may be a blank bullet point on your form, this does not mean there is missing data. 

Submitters will now:

  • Be able to view a list of their reports
  • Have the option to submit a new activity or edit an existing one. Note: Editing an existing activity will create a new activity by auto-populating fields so the employee can make necessary changes.

Research Objectivity and Business Conflicts

Conflicts arise naturally from relationships that Georgia Tech faculty and staff have outside of Georgia Tech. The Conflict of Interest team focuses on reviewing individuals' external activities and ensuring that there are no conflicts. Conflicts may give the perception that an individual has enough of an interest in a company or product that they may not be objective while working on Georgia Tech activities. If there is a conflict, we strive to find a way to manage it. We do this by finding ways to separate the external activity and the research.

We ask that you disclose all external activities via our disclosure system here. If you have questions, please email us at: coi@gatech.edu.

Conflict of Commitment

When individuals have professional relationships outside of Georgia Tech that require a time commitment that may interfere with their ability to complete their Georgia Tech duties, there is a Conflict of Commitment. To help discuss this concern, we work across campus to ascertain whether there is a Conflict of Commitment and how to manage it.

Foreign Engagement

Georgia Institute of Technology encourages the fostering of relationships with groups outside of the United States. The Institute also acknowledges that we have entered into agreements with sponsors about mitigating the risks involved with working with foreign groups. As such, we work with the Foreign Activity group, grant administration, and other groups across campus to help review and address these cases. We ask that all foreign activities be disclosed in our ServiceNow Disclosure System so we can review them and provide information to the Office of Sponsored Projects to facilitate research agreements.

Current Events, News, and Resources

There is a lot of movement regarding foreign activity disclosure. This stems from the below presentation:

Intent for Updated Disclosure Requirements

The NIH also has updated its methods for confirming other elements of outside support:

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/forms/othersupport.htm

More Information for foreign engagement can be found here:

Policies

COI Video