Foreign Influence Disclosure Courses

The Office of Sponsored Programs offers brief (15-20 minute) federal agency-specific Foreign Influence Disclosure training courses for faculty who conduct sponsored research with the Department of Defense (DoD) (including  Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency special requirements), Department of Energy (DoE), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and National Science Foundation (NSF).

In the above video introduction, Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation Dan Sui discusses foreign influence disclosures that must be made to the government when participating in federally sponsored research.

Why is this training necessary?

In January of 2021, the White House issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum on United States Government-Supported Research and Development National Security Policy (known as NSPM 33), and in January 2022, gave  guidance on how to implement this policy  to the federal departments and agencies. The purpose of this Memorandum is to “strengthen protections of United States Government-supported R&D against foreign government interference and exploitation” while “maintaining an open environment to foster research discoveries and innovation that benefit our nation and the world.”  The new guidance from the White House summarizes critical information about these disclosures:

• Who must make them?
• What to disclose?
• How and when to make those disclosures.

In advance of the federal government-wide guidance, DoD, DoE, NIH, and NSF have directed foreign influence disclosures from universities and their Senior/Key personnel. Each agency has unique sponsor-specific requirements that must be followed until the guidance is harmonized across the federal government, a process that will take time. To assist you in learning what, how, and when to disclose to each sponsor, the Office of Sponsored Programs has prepared a series of brief training courses, now available in Virginia Tech’s Learning Library.

The courses range 15-20 minutes and include a brief quiz at the end of each course. When proposing sponsored research with these federal sponsors, you are highly encouraged to take the sponsor-specific course before submitting a proposal.

Training Courses

To take the quizzes, click on a link below to take its course:

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

National Science Foundation (NSF)

Department of Defense (DoD)

Department of Energy (DoE)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 

Note: you must be logged into your Virginia Tech account for these links to work.   Otherwise, you will need to take the following steps:

1. Log into the Pageup Talent Management System homepage
2. Select “My Development” from the black toolbar
3. Select “Learning Library”
4. Search for “DoE Foreign Influence Disclosure”

If this does not work, contact vt.training@vt.edu , and send them a screenshot of the error page you encountered.