Research Reopening

Much of the attention to the issue of "reopening" on campus has been focused on teaching. Below is an email circulated yesterday evening on research:

To the Campus Community:

It has been just over two months since I communicated the need to ramp down on-campus research activities due the COVID-19 crisis and city and county safer-at-home orders. In the weeks since then, I have been impressed by and appreciative of your efforts to support one another and, in many cases, to continue your research activities from home.

At the end of April, I convened a committee of representatives from north and south campus to develop guidance for a phased resumption of UCLA research activities so that we would be ready when conditions in Los Angeles County support such a return. The committee developed a comprehensive set of guidelines (PDF) that will enable research to resume as soon as possible while emphasizing the health and safety of our faculty, staff and students.

The resulting guidelines outline policies and requirements for ramping up research at UCLA, including:

• An overview of the ramp-up process.
• Health and safety guidelines.
• Appendices describing requirements for different types of research.
• A template for research operational plans (PDF) that must be submitted and approved prior to the resumption of on-campus activities.

In the first phase of our reopening, we are prioritizing research that cannot be performed remotely and that allows us to maintain the campus’s personnel density at 10% to 25% of our normal figure at any given time.

Within the next week, I expect to share instructions for the preparation, submission, review and approval of research operational plans on my website. In the meantime, I encourage you to review the guidelines for ramping up research (PDF). Please carefully read the instructions accompanying the operational plan template in the appendix. Although plans must be submitted through a specific online process, I encourage you to prepare your responses to the required questions in advance (for example, by creating your own Word document and saving the answers there), so you can easily complete the online template when it is available.

I know you are eager to return to campus and resume the work you were performing in March. Please be patient as your chairs and deans process your plans, and as we allow our colleagues in Environment, Health & Safety (EH&S) and Facilities Management the time to prepare our buildings and operations so they can effectively support you.

UCLA’s Physical Distancing Working Group is developing signage and guidelines to aid in effective distancing; if you have any questions, email Nurit Katz, operations section chief for the Emergency Operations Center at nkatz@facnet.ucla.edu. If you have questions about ordering personal protective equipment for research, email Alyssa Leiva in the EH&S Research Emergency PPE Store at aleiva@ehs.ucla.edu. Questions about the ramp-up plan should be sent to c19@research.ucla.edu.

Sincerely,

Roger Wakimoto

Vice Chancellor for Research and Creative Activities