Menu
Since its very beginning, Duke Kunshan has established an active record of cooperation with other institutions, non-profit organizations and industry on research programs. Non-government sources of research funding come in as research contracts and gifts to support Duke Kunshan’s research and to make use of knowledge and technology generated by the research with these entities support.
In order to provide support to these research funding and to ensure proper compliance with the University policies, Duke Kunshan’s university offices draft, review, negotiate, execute and retain the following agreements:
In order to see all the policies, please refresh this page after log in with your NetID
A letter of intent is a binding document between organizations that are cooperating in the conduct of applying for a research project, in response to a competitive request for proposal (RFP). A letter of intent describes the actions that each organization has agreed to undertake in pre-award process. If the proposal is funded, a research contract will be signed to fulfill the spirit and purpose of this general letter of intent.
Generally, the letter of intent is drafted by the lead organization preparing the proposal for the prime sponsor. It typically expires when the sponsor agrees or rejects the proposal.
Research Service Agreement is the contract between Duke Kunshan and an individual person or an outsourcing entity to conduct tasks assigned by Duke Kunshan as part of a research program sponsored by another organization. Research Service Agreement must often apply (“flow through”) some of the terms of the prime research agreement that is sponsoring the research.
The main differences between a research subcontract and a research service agreement are: 1) the subcontractor’s work and roles defined in the subcontract are academically innovative in research and cannot be replaced by an alternative subcontractor in the market, while the sub-recipient’s work and roles defined in the research service agreement can be performed by an alternative vendor in the market; and therefore 2) the intellectual property rights defined in the subcontract shall be jointly owned by Duke Kunshan and the subcontractor, while defined in the research service agreement the intellectual property rights shall vest in Duke Kunshan.
The agreement is often drawn up between Duke Kunshan and a non-governmental sponsor for the purposes of funding and conducting research at Duke Kunshan. It could follow a main grant award or another research funding agreement, and will involve discrete and specific pieces of work to be undertaken in Duke Kunshan. Duke Kunshan will remain responsible for the main award.
Subaward agreements, a.k.a. collaborative research agreements or subcontracts, are contracts between Duke Kunshan and one or more organizations that are cooperating in the conduct of a research program. In these contracts, there is generally a transfer of funds from Duke Kunshan to other organizations. Or it could be no transfer of funds, instead the Duke Kunshan will allocate appropriation to the subawardee/subcontractor. The agreement describes the actions that each organization has agreed to undertake, and defines the obligations each party has to the others participating in the collaborative research effort.
Subcontracts may include terms governing the following:
In many cases, subcontract shall apply some of the terms from the prime sponsored research agreements or some of the terms and conditions from the grant contracts.
