Camera: Apple iPhone 11 Pro
Exposure: 1/14
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm equivalent
ISO: 500
The University of Utah is starting to slowly reopen certain functions that have been closed in response to COVID-19. For my lab, since I shut things down in early March, this does not mean any substantiative difference, as we started practicing social distancing and remote working back then. I’ve been coming into the lab, and one of the technicians has been coming in to run the electron microscopes, but everyone else pretty much has been working from home. This has certainly complicated things, particularly troubleshooting of failed equipment which has required careful coordination and cleaning while others come in from time to time. I am tremendously grateful to the lab for coordinating, and safely working to help troubleshoot a complex production environment to keep things going, albeit at a reduced rate of productivity.
Regardless of what the federal and state leadership is suggesting in terms of reopening the economy, I’m paying attention to the actual data which suggests that we have not reached a point where I am comfortable risking exposure of people in the lab. Because the infection curves are not reducing, I will be maintaining our remote working for the foreseeable future as the personnel in the lab are the most important to me.
What does all this mean for going forward? How is reduced productivity over the past few months going to impact research, publications, and funding? I don’t know yet. The whole biomedical community, like many other communities worldwide are just feeling our way through. Most labs are being as productive as they can with many labs (ours included) spending the time writing papers, and dealing with the bureaucracy of remote management. Discussion on Twitter from journal editors seems to suggest that paper submissions are waaaaay up. It will be interesting to see what this means for grant submissions. My guess is that grant submissions are going to go up substantially as well while people spend their time out of their labs writing papers and thus… grants.
Some of these photos have been used for an article, A New Life In Orange for the University of Utah, by Julie Kiefer @JulieCKiefer.
Camera: Leica SL2
Exposure: 1/640
Aperture: f/3.5
Focal Length: 18mm
ISO: 800
Camera: Leica SL2
Exposure: 1/250
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 18mm
ISO: 200
Camera: Leica SL2
Exposure: 1/50
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 18mm
ISO: 6,400