Earlier this week, the University received clarification from New York State about research activities during the phased re-start of business activity in the state. Research at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, other defense and national security related research, research in support of manufacturing, and labs focused on health-related research will be eligible for University-approved reopening as early as Monday, May 18.

While this does not include all research activity at the University, it is great news for university research as a whole. We will continue to advocate for the opening of additional areas of research as soon as possible and as allowed by New York State’s phased re-start.

All approved research activities must abide by strict social-distancing guidelines to limit any possibility of spreading COVID-19 within the research community. Guidelines for researchers in the School of Medicine and Dentistry and Arts, Sciences & Engineering have been distributed. It is expected that these restrictions will remain in place for the foreseeable future and any lifting of restrictions will not likely occur before a vaccine becomes widely available.

Research involving human subjects is also being reactivated in a phased approach. Research on human subjects under clinical care will begin in the near future while all other activity will resume by early June. There are also new guidelines for conducting research with human subjects, which include social distancing and masking, to ensure the safety of study subjects and researchers. It will be vital that we all continue to comply with social-distancing guidelines to protect the health and safety of all members of the University of Rochester research community, as well as the local community, and those who volunteer to participate in research studies here at the University.

We very much appreciate the cooperation and patience of everyone within our research community and look forward to a healthy and safe re-design and re-boot of research activities in the coming weeks.

Sincerely,

Robert Clark
Provost and Senior Vice President for Research

Stephen Dewhurst
Vice Dean for Research, School of Medicine and Dentistry

John Tarduno
Dean of Research, Arts, Sciences & Engineering

Richard Waugh
Vice Provost for Research

New York State has given approval for the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) to proceed with a Phase 1 reopening.

The LLE will open on May 18 with approximately 30-40 percent of its workforce, operating under the guidance provided in the LLE COVID-19 Workplace Safety Policy found here.

The LLE’s research and operations in support of the US Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration fall under essential research related to US defense and national security.

As researchers across the University pivot to focus on COVID-19, a central group of researchers and clinicians at the medical center are working to ensure URMC offers studies that best meet the spectrum of patients’ needs while avoiding competition for study participant populations.

Before pursuing COVID-19 human subjects research studies, including interventional clinical trials (therapies, vaccines, procedures) and observational studies (biological sampling, surveys, other studies), all human subject researchers must complete a study interest form.

This graph shows how the rate at which the doubling of confirmed cases (purple line) was dramatically reduced once New Jersey adopted social distancing on March 28. However, the daily number of new confirmed cases (black dots) continued to increase, albeit slowly.

There’s good news and bad news about the impact social distancing is having on the spread of COVID-19 in the United States, according to a new study by scientists at Cornell University and the University of Rochester.

The good news: In all but three states, social distancing reduced the rate at which confirmed cases were doubling. Across all states, the average doubling rate decreased sharply from 3.31 days to about 100 days.

The bad news: the measures have not been enough to significantly reduce the number of daily new cases. Though that number has plateaued, the disease is still spreading, albeit more slowly, but not actually contracting.

“The effect is not as large as one would have hoped for going in,” says lead author Aaron Wagner, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell University. As a result, he says, the states now reopening businesses and relaxing restrictions “do not have much headroom” for error. “You’re right on the edge of it starting to blow up again.”

“Policy makers need to be aware of this,” says co-author Elaine Hill, assistant professor of public health sciences at the University of Rochester. “We need more studies to identify the practices that can move us to a place where COVID-19 is actually contracting.”

Read more here.

American hospitals have to operate at near-maximum capacity when it comes to patients and procedures—just to remain financially viable.

Now, many hospitals are facing a budget crisis, revealing “the extent to which their business model is structured to reward high-cost surgeries over the very type of routine care that COVID-19 is demanding,” argues physician and historian Mical Raz, the Charles E. and Dale L. Phelps Professor in Public Policy and Health at the University of Rochester.

The pandemic has made clear that a health care system that prioritizes volume—specifically of procedures—“is structurally incapable of sustainably responding and adapting to such an unprecedented challenge,” Raz writes in an op-ed, published in the Made by History section of the Washington Post. Read more here.

Seven Rochester undergraduates and five graduate students have been offered National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships, part of a federally sponsored program that provides up to three years of graduate study support for US students pursuing doctoral or research-based degrees in STEM, STEM education, and social science fields.

“Rochester students were wildly successful this year,” says Nick Vamivakas, dean of graduate and postdoctoral affairs. “We had recipients across the social and natural sciences, computer science, and engineering. The increase in our awardees and honorable mentions speaks to the creativity and research excellence of our students and highlights the exceptional mentoring they receive from our faculty.”

The awardees are:

• Raquel Esther Ajalik, PhD student, biomedical engineering
• Natalie Allen ‘20, physics and astronomy
• Jeffrey William Beard, PhD student, biomedical Engineering
• Rose Driscoll, PhD student, biology
• Gregory Hernandez ’20, audio and music engineering
• Daniel Krajovic ‘20, chemical engineering
• Michela Maiola ‘20, chemistry
• Carlie Mentzer, PhD student, geological sciences
• Adina Ripin ‘20, physics and astronomy
• Gabriel Sarch ’20, biomedical engineering
• Sydney Shannon ‘20, biomedical engineering
• Hannah Tompkins, PhD student, geological sciences

Read more here.

• Theodore Brown, professor emeritus of history and public health sciences,  recipient of this year’s Genevieve Miller Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM). Brown’s research interests run the gamut from US health policy and politics, to the history of psychosomatic medicine, stress research, and biopsychosocial approaches to clinical practice.
• Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva, an assistant professor of history, the first recipient of the President’s Ferrari Humanities Research Award. The award will support research for Sierra Silva’s forthcoming book, In the Wake of the Raid: Piracy, Captivity and the 1683 Raid on Veracruz.
• Peter Christensen, an associate professor of art history, recognized by the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) with the Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award for his book Germany and the Ottoman Railways: Art, Empire and Infrastructure. The award was established in 1949 to recognize annually the most distinguished work of scholarship in the history of architecture published by a North American scholar.
• Ehsan Hoque, an assistant professor of computer science and the Asaro Biggar Family Fellow in Data Science, one of 10 new emerging leaders selected by the National Academy of Medicine to collaborate with the organization on “sparking transformative change to improve health care for all.”
• Ellen Matson, Wilmot Assistant Professor of Chemistry, one of 14 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars for 2020. The award is given by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation to faculty members in the chemical sciences who are within the first five years of their academic careers.
• Annette Medina-Walpole, the Paul H. Fine Professor of Medicine and chief of geriatrics in the Department of Medicine, who began her term as president of the American Geriatrics Society on May 6. She will lead the 6,000-member national society that implements and advocates for programs in geriatrics patient care, research, professional and public education, and public policy.

Many University faculty have supported the David T. Kearns Center in offering a six-week summer session for its Upward Bound programs since 2007.

This year, due to COVID-19 restrictions, the program will be online from July 6-31. The center is looking for faculty to create STEM content for the 9^th-12^th grade Rochester City School District students participating in the program. This content can include prerecorded modules, demonstrations, and/or videos about how to pursue a career in STEM.

All content will be provided through Blackboard, which will allow many different content formats. Kearns Center staff is happy to work with faculty to determine what format would work best for your contribution. Please contact Danielle Daniels by June 1 if you would be interested in contributing or have questions. She can be reached at Danielle.daniels@rochester.edu or 585-520-7511.

Here are three important links for researchers:

• University’s COVID-19 website for important updates and guidance on working, teaching, and learning remotely
• University of Rochester Medical Center website for restrictions, resources, and news
• Office of Research and Project Administration (ORPA) site on Coronavirus 2019 resources related to sponsored programs

New Funding Opportunities

• National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) seeks to leverage existing clinical trials expertise, using NHLBI programs that are actively conducting Phase I-III clinical trials, to rapidly initiate and conduct Phase I-Phase I/II (bridging) clinical trials in patients at risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection and/or patients with COVID-19. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis through 5 p.m. Monday, October 5, 2020.

• National Library of Medicine (NLM) is encouraging the submission of R21 applications to address methods for mining clinical data that can be used to identify or predict the presence of COVID-19 in biomedical phenotype data. Applications are expected to focus on informatics and data science methods to help address the COVID-19 pandemic in a timely manner. Apply by Tuesday, June 16, 2020.

• In order to rapidly improve understanding of the neurological consequences of infection of SARS-CoV-2 and of COVID-19, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is encouraging the submission of applications for supplements to address the biology, pathophysiology, prevention, diagnosis, sequelae, or treatment of COVID-19 that are directly related to the NINDS mission. Apply by Thursday, April 15, 2021.
• The Office of Strategic Coordination (OSC), which manages the Common Fund, seeks new, innovative perspectives and approaches to the prevention of, preparation for or response to coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, domestically or internationally. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until 5 p.m. Friday, June 19, 2020.
  

New Resources

• Open-Access Data and Computational Resources to Address COVID-19: The NIH Office of Data Science Strategy is regularly updating a list of open-access data and computational resources to address COVID-19 that are freely available to researchers.
• Center for Data to Health COVID-19 DREAM Challenge: The Center for Data to Health has developed a platform to support testing analytic and machine learning hypotheses on clinical data to rapidly discover and implement approaches for care. Learn more about the DREAM Challenge and how it works.

The COVID-19 pandemic is giving all of us a glimpse of what a cancer diagnosis can feel like when the disease steals control.

Although some aspects of society in New York state are working to reopen, it will take a while for masks to come off, for grocery store visits to feel uneventful, for the economy to rebound, and for our lives to return to “normal.” In the meantime, learning healthy ways of coping with the loss of control will help all of us adjust to our new realities.

Jennifer Richman, associate professor of psychiatry, and Judy Zeeman-Golden, director of Wilmot’s Pluta Integrative Oncology & Wellness Center, offer tips that can help all of us — whether cancer is part of your life or not.   Read more here.

Temporary cost reduction plans being implemented include furloughs for 3,474 staff members, or 19.4 percent of URMC’s workforce of 17,885. Read more here.