When Stanford faculty, staff and students travel abroad for research purposes, they may be subject to export controls or trade sanction compliance requirements. This page discusses Stanford policies on traveling to foreign countries with digital storage devices and to comprehensively sanctioned countries.
For travel with laptops and other digital storage devices, visit the DoResearch website for the policy and process regarding temporary exports.
For travel with materials, prototypes, equipment and components, see the DoResearch website for a decision tree and for more information about when export controls apply.
U.S. export controls were placed on all international shipments, hand carries, and third-country shipments to Russia and Belarus for a vast majority of items on US export control lists. Learn more on the DoResearch webpage.
Stanford Policy
Any plans to travel on behalf of Stanford University to comprehensively sanctioned countries must be reviewed and approved by the university export control officer in advance of travel. Email the request to the export control officer and, if the travel is approved, include the email approval in the expense reimbursement.
A travel compliance assessment will include, but will not necessarily be limited to, review of the traveler’s invitation letter (when applicable) and a detailed daily travel itinerary from departure through return. Travelers should provide those documents to the university export control officer when requesting approval for travel.
Travel Reimbursement Requirements
Stanford will not reimburse travel expenses to comprehensively sanctioned countries without pre-approval by the university export control officer (travel must be pre-approved prior to departure). To facilitate reimbursement, the university export control officer’s written pre-approval must be uploaded to the transaction as backup documentation and noted within the transaction’s business purpose.
