How Covid-19 has changed us
While the pandemic has introduced more efficient and global ways of working, researchers and educators still have challenges to overcome
A year ago, the world was in the thick of a pandemic that has so far killed more than 4.5 million people worldwide. University classrooms, labs and offices worldwide were mostly or completely shuttered, and much of the scientific community was working from home. Vaccines developed against Covid-19 have returned things to a more normal state for many people, but there are significant ways in which the virus’s outbreak has transformed academic research, perhaps forever.
‘There obviously will be very big changes occurring because of the Covid-19 pandemic,’ says Stanford University, US, chemistry professor Dick Zare. Foremost, he suggests that scientists won’t be in their offices or labs all the time anymore. ‘We have discovered that it is possible to work very effectively from home,’ Zare tells Chemistry World. This realisation has led to an unprecedented embrace of teleworking in academia and at research institutions.
‘My lab does experimental work, and we can no way do that remotely – that’s not what I am talking about – but a lot of people will no longer have to be on campus five days a week,’ explains Zare. The octogenarian worked entirely remotely for over a year starting in March 2020, returning to campus three days a week in May 2021 only after being fully vaccinated. Since late July, he is back on campus five days a week.