Calmessages

Date 5/16/2007
Sender Beth Burnside, Vice Chancellor for Research
To Deans, Directors, Department Chairs
Subject Conflict of Interest Modules for Designated Officials and Researchers
Message Deans, Directors, and Department Chairs:

On May 23rd, the University of California will launch an online
Conflict of Interest Briefing for researchers at all UC locations.

The Briefing, which takes about 30 minutes to complete, is designed to
help researchers recognize and deal with conflict of interest
situations that may arise during their work. The new Conflict of
Interest Briefing was developed by a UC team that included members of
the faculty and research staffs from various campuses, headed by the
UCOP Office of Research, with a vendor, Workplace Answers. Like the
Ethics Briefing, which was rolled out to the campus in April, the
Briefing can be taken on any computer with Internet access.

Not all Principal Investigators or those with research
responsibilities will be required to take the Briefing. Researchers
have been identified as those individuals in the various professorial
and research title series who received more than $1000 in salary from
selected extramural funding sources over the past 12 months. On May
23rd, the selected Berkeley researchers will receive an email from
coibriefing@berkeley.edu with a personalized link that will direct
them to the new Conflict of Interest Briefing.

As with the Ethics Briefing, individuals are encouraged to complete
the Conflict of Interest Briefing soon after they receive the email
notification. The Briefing will remain available to them for their
reference throughout the year. Researchers are encouraged to bookmark
the link/Briefing so that they may refer to it in the future.

Questions regarding the conflict of interest briefing may be directed
to coibriefing@berkeley.edu.

Beth Burnside
Vice Chancellor for Research