Snapshots of Life—Early Career Materials Scientists Managing in the Midst of a Pandemic

Abstract

Scientists are a tough lot—the love of and drive to pursue scientific knowledge were what motivated us to take the extra laboratory courses as undergraduates, to chase summer research jobs, graduate school, and beyond. A global pandemic brings to bear an entirely new set of challenges, which will be different for every person. We asked a number of early career researchers from around the globe to weigh in with their observations and thoughts, as of April 15, 2020. Below you will read insights from undergraduates through to early career professors from around the globe, that outline their situations and frames of mind. We will be following up with them, and others, in a month on May 15, 2020, to catch up with them and learn more about how people are adapting to a rapidly evolving situation. It is our hope that these snapshots of the lives of early career scientists underline the inescapable fact that we are all in this together, and that they provide some solace and inspiration for your own set of circumstances. Chemistry of Materials sees it as its essential duty to provide extensions of deadlines to authors as needed. Laboratories are in various stages of shutdown around the world, and we want to work with you, so please do not hesitate to get in touch. Please remember that all of our editors are academics and practicing scientists as well, and so we are in the same big boat. Stay safe. Yinyin Bao, Group leader, Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, ETH Zürich I never expected that a simple assembly of certain macromolecules could have such a huge worldwide impact on human life, which is what we as polymer scientists endeavor to achieve but cannot. Ironically, the coronavirus succeeded in making it happen. Working in the second most densely infected country, as a father of two little kids and a junior group leader, I would not say that lockdown life is easy. With our lab closed, I can only focus on the papers, reports and other writing work, and communications with students can only be done online. What is more complicated is that I have to shift my working time mainly to the night, so that I can have “bulk time” to concentrate on one thing. Although with less productivity, fortunately I have more time to teach my daughter mathematics, read story books for my son, make handicrafts with them, and have other fun. This greatly eases my anxiety due to the suspended research, which makes my lockdown life better than expected. During the spread of coronavirus, another thing I did not expect was the huge difference between East and West regarding people’s reactions. A typical example is the big debate on whether uninfected people should wear masks. Since the outbreak of SARS in 2003, Chinese and other Asians have become very sensitive to unknown viruses, and wearing masks has been considered as an effective method to prevent the spread. However, this is treated as a sign of sickness and overreaction for most Europeans, and is thus not socially acceptable. Three weeks ago, when I wore my first mask just before the lockdown of ETH, I only saw Asian people wearing masks in Switzerland. Surprisingly, along with the situation of COVID19 getting worse, I start to see Europeans wearing masks in the stores and on the street. I even read the news that Austrians are required to wear masks in supermarkets. It is interesting to see this transformation due to the reconciliation between Eastern and Western culture, and I will continuously follow this trend during this special period. Amaury Bossion, Post-doctoral researcher, Université Paris Saclay, CNRS, Institut Galien Paris-Saclay While the new coronavirus pandemic is dominating headlines worldwide and the French President, Mr. Emmanuel Macron, just extended the stay-at-home order, here are my thoughts on the surreal atmosphere. As a young postdoctoral scientist, I must admit it is quite harsh not only sacrificing laboratory time but also socializing only remotely. It is even more frustrating when this crisis put an instantaneous halt to promising ongoing experiments. This bizarre and heavy atmosphere is even more present in that I became, partly against my will, a troglodyte in my small Parisian apartment. While lots of my friends and colleagues returned home to spend more time with their families at the beginning of the crisis, a mixture of logic and reflection advised me to stay home for the greater good, despite my family’s call to come back. Although, being organized and rigorous, COVID-19 is putting a strain on me mentally as remaining focused upon writing ongoing articles and reviews all day is really demanding with all the other distractions surrounding me. Physically, it has considerably reduced my daily physical activity to the point where the most exercise I get is the few walking steps needed to move around my flat. Although, I sincerely hope this horrific time will end soon, and we will learn lessons for future preparedness, I definitely believe that we can take advantage of it to grow mentally and learn new things. Davide Brambilla, Assistant professor, Faculté de Pharmacie, Université de Montréal As a son of a health professional in the red zone in Italy, I was rapidly aware of the seriousness of the infection. Nonetheless, the pandemic materialized as a storm when, from one day to the other, we had to shut down the laboratory and stop all nonessential experiments. After the initial phase of disorientation, the first work-related thoughts went to the teaching, the graduate students and their projects. While for undergraduate classes the Université de Montréal rapidly reacted and provided support to generate online classes, for the research, the initial stress slowly converted in the recognition that this could be a great opportunity to review and better plan our projects. Now, after a month of the home-office, I feel that this forced shutdown brought me out of a working routine, and made me appreciate even more the importance of our profession. Scientific research is the only actual weapon we have to fight this infection and to prevent or give a rapid response to future ones. Deeply, I hope this pandemic will teach us all something, and that the opinions of scientists will receive higher consideration by the society and the decision-making institutions. Kang Cai, Post-doctoral fellow, Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University I am experiencing my second “stay-at-home” period in the US now. I am a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University in the US. Three months ago, I went back to China to attend an academic forum, and then stayed at my hometown in Hunan Province to spend Chinese spring festival with my family. On Jan. 23, the COVID-19 outbreak happened, and I experienced my first “stay-at-home” period. My return flight to the US was on January 31st, which turned out to be United Airline’s last flight from China to the US. After a two-week self-quarantine, I worked hard in the lab and tried to get as many results as possible, since I realized that universities in the US could also be shut down in the near future, which happened one month later. Now, I have been staying in my apartment for three weeks—I work on manuscripts, read papers, think about proposals, do “reactions” in the kitchen, and watch TV. The group meeting is held every week via Zoom video, which is good, because it becomes the only “social activity” every week. Currently I have plenty of work to do, which makes the “stay-at-home” days not that boring. But if the days continue for another one-to-two months, or even longer, which seems very likely to happen, I am not sure whether I will become anxious or not. It is a tough year for all of us. I am supposed to be on the job market this year, but now the situation has changed a lot. The future is full of uncertainty. Long Chen, Professor, Department of Chemistry, Tianjin University During the locked-down period in our city since February, although the laboratories are still closed and all the students keep staying in their hometown, we all have great confidence that our country, and the entire world, can win this COVID-19 pandemic crisis. We keep in touch with our group members via Wechat, and also continue to hold the group meetings online, with a focus on literature reports. Although from the early times of this pandemic we were not allowed to enter the office in the campus, all the online resources of the university can be conveniently accessed via a VPN connection. It is also an opportunity for the principal investigator and graduate students to analyze and summarize their research work. We recently managed to finish an invited review contribution and several manuscripts. With the situation improving and becoming better and better in China, some universities have already announced their gradual reopening time schedule. It is my hope that humanity pulls together and builds a future in which we are united to fight together against this virus and bring about the fastest possible victory. Joya Cooley, Post-doctoral fellow, Materials Research Laboratory, University of California Santa Barbara I’ve read plenty that says that a routine is the most helpful for maintaining overall sanity. I’ve been keeping a routine, but have found that keeping a flexible routine with some goals works better for me. Some of those goals include: sit down at my desk and get some writing done, read some literature, do yoga, make meals, check on my parents. I find that variation in my routine helps with maintaining sanity—if I stray from a rigid routine, I start to create more inner turmoil when I cannot keep up. However, if I just try to set some daily/weekly goals, I can tackle them based on how I’m feeling that particular day. Try to practice yoga at least 4 times a week; some days it happens in the morning, some days in the evening, some days not at all. Write for at least one hour a day; some days that happens all at once, some days it is broken up into shorter sessions. I feel I’m in a precarious position as I’m wrapping up my postdoctoral work and gearing up to begin my independent career, but all I can do for now is take it one day at a time. Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena, Assistant professor, Department of Chemistry, Georgia Tech Our laboratories closed unofficially on March 13th, 2020, as I worried about the health of my students and postdocs. It coincided with spring break and some students were traveling abroad to see their families. I was hesitant to advise them on travel and the Institute had not officially closed, making it difficult to issue strong recommendations. Georgia Tech officially closed all nonessential activities one week later. The weeks after were tough, as students got stranded abroad and experiments were not finished to the extent we wanted. Our laboratories only opened in October 2019, and we spent the past 6 months ramping up. It took one day to ramp everything down. Nonetheless, this has presented itself as an opportunity to come up with strong experimental plans, revisit the literature, and compile and analyze data that will be going into future manuscripts. The week of April 6, 2020, finally started feeling normal and we are trying to make the most of it. I have a plan for each of my students and postdocs for the next two months, after that, I will have to reevaluate! Will we turn into a computational group? We will see! As for teaching, transitioning to online format for this millennial (me) was easy and my students adapted quite well—they ask more questions than ever. John Dagdelen, Graduate student, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory We are a team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory working with colleagues from the biomedical research community to make text mining and search tools specifically tailored to COVID-19 research with the goal of helping to accelerate our colleagues’ research. Our team is made up of a number of graduate student researchers and postdocs from LBNL and UC Berkeley who specialize in natural language processing methods for analyzing materials science literature, but we were approached about a month ago by colleagues from the Innovative Genomics Institute about applying some of our techniques to the COVID-19 literature. Since then, we have been working around the clock to build covidscholar.org, a knowledge portal designed to help researchers stay on top of the COVID-19 literature. To our knowledge, our database is the most comprehensive and current source for COVID-19 papers available today with more than 45,000 papers and we are expanding to include patents and clinical trials in the near future. Our site also includes features that leverage machine learning models that extract knowledge from the literature and help researchers make new connections that they might have missed due to the sheer volume of research coming out every day (we are seeing more than 150 papers published on COVID-19 daily.) This project has been extremely motivating for everyone on the team and we have been able to make rapid progress as a result. Miriam Fenniri, Undergraduate student, University of British Columbia I am a soon-to-be fourth (senior) year undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia (UBC). I was fortunate enough to spend last summer in an organic chemistry lab at Université Laval, where I was working on the synthesis of low band gap conducting polymers in the laboratory of Prof. Mario Leclerc. This summer, I was planning on staying on UBC campus doing research and continuing my work as a teaching assistant until COVID-19 got in the way. Not only is the course that I was going to assist with canceled, but the research center where I was going to spend these next 4 and a half months is closed until further notice. I am still living on-campus. Many of my colleagues and classmates have returned home—some are still here either by choice or because of travel restrictions. Classes were moved online on March 13th, and shortly thereafter, laboratories closed and research was halted. The transition to online learning has been smooth, however I never expected to have to write a midterm, much less three midterms, in my living room. At least I am now prepared to do the same regarding my final exams. To combat loneliness (and boredom), my family has been hosting weekly video-chats and strangely enough, I look forward to them! Matthew Horton, Materials Project staff, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab I work in computational materials science, a field for which I’m enormously grateful that myself and my colleagues can continue to make contributions to remotely. However, this can only happen because of people out there who are still performing the necessary maintenance and support for the high-performance computers and servers that we use. For myself, these are the people who are still keeping the facilities at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) running smoothly here in Berkeley, but I know that my colleagues greatly appreciate similar efforts all across the world. It is important we recognize all of these people, and the personal risk they’re taking on, as well as everyone working to keep laboratories in a safe and stable condition. Beyond computation, much of my job is working to share the data we generate online at the Materials Project so that it is accessible to as broad a group of people as possible, and part of that is working to try to build a community. I have many open questions for how best to do this, but it is feeling necessary now more than ever that we better understand what steps we can take to make our community stronger and more inclusive. For my part, I’m enjoying talking to scientists on an online materials science discussion forum we recently launched, as well as help welcome in new developers to make contributions to the open-source codes we work on. As this situation evolves we can challenge ourselves to become more inventive in finding ways to connect and collaborate together, and carry these lessons forward. Hrishikesh Joshi, Graduate student, Department of Heterogeneous Catalysis, Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung I have been living in Germany for 3.5 yrs, pursuing a doctorate in chemistry. Presently, I am preparing for a big day in my career, my Ph.D. defense, “remotely.” If I had to describe my current state in one word, it would be “uncertain” on all accounts. Will the Internet hold up during the defense? Will my online presentation be good enough? Will I find a job after my defense? The global economy is headed toward a recession, and most companies are downsizing. Being an international candidate, it will be more challenging to find a job now than before. On the one hand, I am thrilled as I get to at least defend my Ph.D. On the other hand, I am disappointed as I miss out on the opportunity to share this day with people. Working remotely has made me appreciate personal interactions even more. Every Thursday, I am very excited as I get to go to the lab (reduced-workforce regulations) and feel a bit normal again. Nevertheless, these times have also been productive as I am working on overdue programming projects and experimenting a lot with cooking. I feel these times are uncertain and disappointing but opportunistic in some ways. Brian Khau, Graduate student, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Tech The enactment of unfamiliar public health measures and the rapid breakdown of our status quo are two major emotional stressors associated with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As an early career scientist, it is easy to fall into the rut of futility that comes with leaving experiments half-finished with looming deadlines. Instead of focusing on events outside of my control, I found it more productive to reframe the current situation as a unique opportunity to work on myself, whether it be through reading up on current literature or investing more time into hobbies. In the past month, I’ve invested more time to properly care for my existing houseplants, repurposing a garment rack to create a DIY grow light setup. If you are in need of a hobby, I recommend cultivating common, inexpensive vining plants such as pothos or philodendron! Both plants display rapid growth and thrive even when you occasionally forget to water them, and with enough care and time they will grow into respectable, climbing foliage. Houseplants are also inspiring metaphors for how we should live our lives; by constantly reaching for the sky while taking care of our essential needs, we can succeed and flourish in the face of unexpected change. Grit Kupgan, Postdoctoral researcher, Department of Chemistry, University of Arizona As a member of a theoretical/computational group, I feel grateful that our research does not have to come to a halt. I cannot imagine the frustrations of researchers who have to delay their work as laboratories become inaccessible. For me, the transition from working in the lab to working from home has been a smooth one. At the beginning of March, our advisor requested a meeting to develop a contingency plan. As expected, the plan was invoked within a week due to the worsening pandemic. Because of this preparation, everyone in the group was ready. Our data were backed up, and some of us even took our workstations home. Indeed, working from home has several advantages. I get to spend more time with my family who lives in a different state, and eliminate daily commutes. To keep the research momentum going, our group holds the research meetings twice a week online. Additionally, I try to maintain my usual routines, such as work hours and breaks, and attend online seminars whenever possible. Unfortunately, in my opinion, working from home reduces the sense of camaraderie slightly. In the lab, we can have research discussions, ask questions, get suggestions, and share personal stories and thoughts about politics (domestic and international) with our colleagues daily, which is always a pleasure. Henry S. La Pierre, Assistant professor, Department of Chemistry, Georgia Tech My professional and personal life move on different frequencies. My research group is in a rush to publish and to meet grant deadlines. Even with the closure of laboratories and the cancellation of a busy travel schedule, leaving synchrotron and magnet lab experiments indefinitely suspended, our scientific progress is still planned on the order of days. While I am building plans for my students to safely return to the lab, these may very well not be implemented: there is no justification to rush back without effective and organized testing. As my wife, daughter, and I prepare for the arrival of her baby brother in July, I am acutely aware that the changes and dangers of this new world will not abate soon. It is exhausting simultaneously meeting the demands of the moment and mitigating the risks of a nebulous “return.” These risks are particularly worrisome in the vacuum of Federal and State leadership. As we rebuild our institutions, scientists, engineers, and academics must demand the integration of our technical and organizational expertise to the structure and function of our governments. One bright spot in this debacle has been the competent and measured response of scientific leadership across disciplines and institutions. Chengcheng Rao, Graduate student, Department of Chemistry, University of Alberta With respect to my own research, my ongoing experiments needed to be postponed, accompanied by a shift of focus to literature, writing, and paperwork. I had been wondering if it would become possible to execute my experiments automatically and/or remotely? Currently, the answer is no, but I cannot help but observe that with the growth of AI and breakthroughs underpinned by intelligent robots, some experiments will be doable by machines with fewer hands-in-the-lab. It is an eye-opening moment to think about how to bridge and transfer this advanced technology to my research as well. For interpersonal communication, our group meetings have moved online to keep social distancing and self-isolation, which is a new format for me. Hence, we need some time to get familiar with this new communication method/software as face-to-face communication is more productive. All graduate courses are all online as well, for graduate students who need to take courses, and this is a challenge. Meanwhile, so much Information is shared by email, and it sure feels like we are receiving literally tons of emails every day—it is very hard to follow every email as some have too much/little information, and some are duplicated or even conflicting. It is another challenge to obtain useful information effectively through the information explosion. For my graduation, as I approach the end of my Ph.D., my defense was expected at the end of the summer of 2020. Will I have an online defense, and a virtual graduation convocation? I hope not. Hence, I am always thinking about when the coronavirus outbreak will come to an end. Wuhan’s shutdown was lifted on April 8, and it shows that the epidemic will be brought under control if effective controls are taken. But will it manifest itself as a second wave? This is the part I am most worried about. After thinking about all aspects, it is necessary to create and maintain a routine during this ever-changing time. Do some work on paper or computer, avoid going out unnecessarily, and be sure to get some exercise to strengthen immunity—these are the things that I am doing. Although the temperature is still below zero Celsius in Edmonton, I do believe spring is on its way. Adrianne Rosales, Assistant professor, University of Texas at Austin Almost exactly one year ago, I was working from home for a different reason: the birth of my daughter. While I was over the moon to be a new mother, there was a part of me that struggled with the anxiety of staying productive. My research group was only two years old, and I had watched others continue to submit grants, write papers, and advise students soon after the births of their children. Whether that productivity was real or not, I held myself to an impossibly high standard on very little sleep. When COVID-19 began to spread, I was acutely aware of the implications of shutting down my lab space and working from home again, not even one year later. Nap time only goes so far, and my group was still mostly first- and second-year graduate students. Things were finally starting to work! Ultimately, it was clear that much larger consequences were at hand and that many would suffer. While it was still voluntary, I decided to pause our lab activity. Our university mandate came the following week, but in the meantime, it felt like a decision I made every day. And although I still hold high expectations for my group, we have worked together to make sure those expectations are also realistic. This will not be the last challenge my lab faces, and I hope that in addition to research productivity, I am training my lab on leadership and resiliency. Dong Wang, Professor, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences The COVID-19 pandemic is now well under control in China as of recent. Most of our regular daily life has recovered, although the Institute is only open to permanent staff. The “good” thing is I have much more time to concentrate on research—I reviewed several papers during this time, probably more than I usually do, and I feel that I have read each manuscript more carefully than before. Senior graduate students have not yet come back from home, which will certainly have a big impact on the progress of their thesis and the production of the group as a whole. As a group of experimental chemistry, we urgently await, with great anticipation, the start of normal experiments and research. Social media on the web have played an important role during this special period. I taught a course to first-year graduate students online, in spite of having no experience with respect to online teaching, and with relief I can say finally that it went well. Many conferences have been canceled or postponed to next year, but on the other hand, online conferences became increasingly popular. I have already received several invitations for online Ph.D. defenses, which is critical for our young people to progress. Web-based conferences can significantly save time, and may become more and more popular even after the pandemic. I am confident that the pandemic will be under control worldwide, probably starting around the summer. However, the impact of the pandemic on the economy already shows, and I hope that it will not affect the funding situation in the future. Qifan Yan, Associate professor, East China University of Science and Technology During this winter vacation, I went to Wuhan to visit my family on 16th of January, one week before the lockdown of the city caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. I stayed at my parents’ home with my family for more than two months, wondering about the fates of my entire family. The virus infected several of my relatives, four of whom were hospitalized. Luckily, they all recovered, except my 99-year-old grandfather. During the most dire of days, like the people of Wuhan, I could not sleep in the night and was looking for the slightest hope in the news, while planning to limit exposure of uninfected family members. With strong backup from the Chinese people, especially medical personnel, Wuhan survived and reopened on 8th of April. I returned to Shanghai by flight on the first day Wuhan reopened, and was greeted by media instead of medical teams upon arrival. During the city lockdown, a journal article authored by a student of mine and me was submitted in spite of difficulties caused by a lagging Internet connection. After peer-review, a reviewer raised stability issues, which required further experimental data. Luckily, my collaborators were able to provide relevant results. I sincerely cannot anticipate the outcome, had I wrote to the editor explaining that we could not provide any further experimental data in the near future due to the coronavirus outbreak, or if I were to ask for an unlimited extension of time to revise. As of now, we still do not have a schedule to reopen the laboratories. I am still waiting for another 14 days upon arrival in Shanghai before the university can clear me to return to campus. Almost all my group members were in their respective hometowns, longing for a notice to return to Shanghai, especially the ones who are graduating this year. Online meetings were possible but were difficult due to slow Internet connections. I have individual discussions regarding literature with each one of them, hoping they are coping well with the current situation. Jillian Buriak, Editor-in-Chief, Chemistry of Materials We wish the best to all of our authors, readers, and reviewers. We are in this together, and we look forward to another set of snapshots in a month.