Reflections on Conducting Research From Home During COVID-19
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Acknowledgments. Special thanks to the many students, faculty, and professionals who have shared their personal experiences or offered to assist with recruitment for this work. I extend my deepest condolences for the many lives lost as a result of COVID-19, and for the hardships that many are faced with during this difficult time. In the last year, this line of work has greatly benefitted from the contributions and strong support from Anne Baranger, Colette Flood, Julio Jaramillo, Jenna Nicolas, Gia Jones, Seth Van Doren, Sinéad Griffin, Katelyn Cooper, Carrie Des Roches, Dianna Bolt, Megan Hochstrasser, Hope Henderson, Yulia Golubovskaya, Clarice de Azevedo Souza, Melanie Leavitt Cantarutti, Kristy Nordahl, Jennifer Doudna, and Brad Ringeisen. Thanks to Erin Dolan (UGA) and Jennifer Collins (USF) for sharing insights from your work on similar projects.
Funding. This work was funded by the Innovative Genomics Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the National Science Foundation Graduate School Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP), grant number DGE 1106400. This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS) under the Community College Internship (CCI) program.
The very first email I received that mentioned the novel coronavirus disease 2019 was on February 14, 2020. Valentine's Day. In a newsletter summarizing science highlights, a few short sentences announced the name of this new virus that had infected thousands of people as "COVID-19," and the fact that experts had yet to find a good method for its diagnosis. The second email about COVID-19 that I received was from work on February 25; it explained that the spread of the virus was likely to impact international travel. It provided information from the Centers for Disease Control and recommendations to wash hands and use hand sanitizer to prevent its spread. There was no mention of wearing masks yet. In the subsequent weeks, I heard from more organizations and groups I'm affiliated with about the emergence of this disease and speculation from each group about the seriousness of the situation. For many people at that point, it was something too strange or too worrying to think about. But for me, this disease led to an entirely new line of research.
Back in 2007, the first real laboratory I stepped foot in as a community college intern focused on using microbiological methods to answer questions about ecosystems. It was with that group that I learned to hold a pipette, stitched my iPod Classic into my very own lab coat, and foolishly printed a typo-filled research poster without letting my mentor (a postdoctoral fellow) review it first. Now, 14 years later, it feels important to have been introduced to the world of science and research through microbiology. Reading articles about how PCR is used to detect the presence of COVID-19 after a nasal swab brings back powerful memories of working in the lab, concentrating on moving tiny amounts of liquid from one well to another, sometimes for hours on end. I have since transitioned from working in biology laboratories to working with undergraduates and graduate students, conducting research in the social sciences about the scientific community, and—as of this past year—about the scientific community's response to COVID-19.
One of the surprising things about conducting research related to COVID-19 is the speed at which everything happened. Like many people in my professional community, I had begun to work entirely from home in the spring, and had been notified that my summer research plans to collect field data would need to be altered. I had to purchase a cooling [End Page 29] pad to rest my laptop on because it quickly became overheated from back-to-back virtual meetings during the day. I was filled with dread every time I read the news or opened my email inbox. I sent an email to my research advisor on March 26 about my first ideas for a national survey to poll students majoring in the sciences to find out how COVID-19 may have impacted their short-term academic or...
