ISSCR Survey: How the Stem Cell Community is Responding to the COVID-19 Crisis

“Slack and Zoom have become our best allies in staying sane, connected, and productive. One major action is that we now meet as a team, via Zoom, every morning for a 20-40 minute "coffee break". We use these meetings to discuss any updates to our work, but primarily they are to check in to see how everyone is doing/coping. We talk about a mix of science and personal matters. It has been very helpful to keep everyone on the same page and maintain a schedule while working from home.”

“More than ever, my lab and I have been thinking about how to integrate factors of diversity and health disparities to our modeling approach. Reductive stem cell models are further hampered when these issues are not addressed with human-based methods. This is perhaps a once-in-a lifetime opportunity for many scientists to spend greater time doing research on theory and ethics. Although I believe this should be done all the time in parallel to experiments, there is no better time to do these kinds of investigations.”

“I created a calendar for the lab so that only one person is in lab at a time. We've also started a new lab meeting series with our international collaborators (something we were not previously doing). I've personally been focusing more on bioinformatics work instead of wet lab experiments.”

“I mentor several dozen undergraduate students, so I am finding creative ways to keep them engaged and amused, and to make sure they know that their advisors care about them. I use polls to see how they are feeling and see what’s on their mind about the biological, social, political, and economic, etc. aspects of COVID-19. We also ask them to provide a 3-word response in the chat box about what they appreciated this week. It is usually about being with family, home cooking, and cooking/baking.”

Beyond the lab

“I increased my bird-watching and nature photography. I'm making a Pokémon style Pokédex to catalog common and rare birds in my neighborhood (i.e. bird bingo card). I'm also catching up on a mile-high stack of journal I've never had the time to read, but now I do! No more excuses not to read!”

“It's important for me to go outside regularly for physical activity/exercise, at least once per day, this helps to refresh my mind so I can focus on my research-related work, and to de-stress as being bombarded with news about Covid19 is very anxiety inducing.”

“I spent 4 hours making 1 PPE mask (about 2 hours was re-learning how to use a sewing machine). I'm finally activating the sourdough starter I got for Christmas. Teaching the dog to hold still for toenail trimming. Cutting my son's hair. Watching a lot of scientific webinars I had "flagged for follow-up" in the past year.”

“I have a child - we draw a lot - it is oddly therapeutic.”

Please note: Some quotes have been edited for clarity.

“How are you keeping your lab members motivated and supported? Do you have advice on how to recognize potential mental health issues developing in lab members, especially those who live alone?”

“I would like to hear stories from other researchers about how they are doing, and how they are planning for the financial impacts on their lab and research that I feel will be inevitable.”

“How will this affect the hiring agenda of your labs? Did you plan to hire someone this year and now decided not to?”

“How are you dealing with general productivity concerns? My research primarily consists of wet lab work, so this is a major transition for me. I am having a hard time feeling productive in this sort of environment because it is hard to gauge when time is spent on more abstract forms of work, like reading/acquiring knowledge, as opposed to running a western blot.”

“How are researchers with young children balancing work and childcare?”

"What strategies have others used to cope with the unique challenges of stem cell related research? How have you ramped down their research activity and to what extent? How are you planning to ramp back up? How have you trimmed your mouse lines, and what is the plan for expanding them again? Are you keeping your stem cell cultures going? Are you if so, are you continuing to feed them daily, use fgf slow release tablets, or other stable fgf media?”

“How many people are still getting the message from their leadership that they need to be maximally productive right now by writing grants, papers, etc? I still encounter this tone-deaf message every week, and all attempts to remind leadership that many of us (especially junior people) are home with small children have no effect. Are they not hearing it or do they really not care? I'd like advice on how to actually get this message through, consistently, so we can stop getting emails and attending zoom meetings where someone tells us this again. I've sent gentle messages to people I feel I know well and who I think would be receptive to the message. But it's so pervasive and I don't want to spend all my time trying to adjust the attitudes of senior leadership in every corner of science that I encounter. It wouldn't be good for my career, I'm sure, and it really should not have to be part of my job.”

“How does one realign after such a drastic set back? Expectations from work is high, they expect you to publish, attract funds, but under such circumstances it is so hard to concentrate. Should one expect success in terms of career advancement in the coming years? Are there going to be cuts to funding because of a recession? Where and how do I position myself?”

“How do I progress my career during the hiring freezing?”

“How are other graduate students nearing the end of their contract performing their last experiments when most lab work is on hold?”

“What can graduate students who are not close to defending or writing a manuscript be working on right now, besides reading?”

“Am I the only one who's not the most productive? and who's the most scared?”

“Any ideas for fun ways of interaction?”

“How common is it to feel very stressed? How are other coping with stress and envisioning the future? Do you have suggestions for mental health resources?”

“It's sometimes hard to remain productive at home, what are people doing to make that happen?

How are people staying positive?”