In the past six months as part of the ORA’s commitment to process improvement, the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) took significant steps to address higher than average turnaround time in reviewing and executing unfunded research contracts like Material Transfer and Data Use agreements. In working with the ORA Dragon Team, OTT implemented a number of new or improved strategies for these contracts including: a renewed push to use standard, or pre-agreed template agreements (such as the Uniform Biological Materials Transfer Agreement, under qualifying circumstances), the use of DocuSign to streamline and shorten the signature process,  an increase in the frequency of communications to faculty members during the negotiation process, an improved agreement process workflow that includes both optimization and mapping and an alert system to track aging contracts. 

Additionally, OTT has expanded the team dedicated to these agreements from one FTE to two. In working with the team lead, these Contract Specialists provide a unique opportunity for OTT to effectively double its bandwidth for these contracts. As a final update, OTT is augmenting these changes by launching a new online submission system (contractConnect) to aid researchers in submitting new contracts for review.  Information on Contract Connect was first mentioned in the ORA July 2020 newsletter.  The referenced article can be found here. 

The contractConnect system will be online in the coming weeks and will allow researchers to not only submit new agreements more quickly, but also to see current status on their agreements at any time. Together, these changes support efficient, transparent contract negotiations between Emory and outside parties, whether universities or industry partners. To provide further feedback about this process, please utilize the Faculty Feedback Form.