Innovation Couldn’t Wait: How Research Rolled On

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, WPI worked diligently to protect its entire community, even when that meant restricting nearly all campus access, shutting down labs, and sending faculty members and students home.

It was an unprecedented blow to WPI’s researchers and their projects. But scientists and engineers know how to take on unexpected challenges—even ones with the potential to threaten their life’s work. So instead of throwing in the towel, they pivoted, finding innovative ways to adapt their research and keep it moving.

They took home what equipment they could, set up remote labs in their garages, kitchens, and basements, and did cutting-edge analysis at their dining room tables. When they were able to move back into their on-campus labs many months later, they could jump back into the projects they’d largely sustained while working from home.

“All our laboratory work had to stop when we could not access our labs,” says Jianyu Liang, professor of mechanical engineering, who is helping develop mobile manufacturing labs for the U.S. military. “But we shifted our research to more data analysis, literature review, simulation, and research paper writing based on results we had already obtained.

“Basically, we refocused on things that could be done on a computer or at home. One of my Major Qualifying Project teams worked on designing a toilet cover that would automatically close before flushing [reducing what are known as toilet plumes, aerosols caused by flushing, which can spread some microorganisms]. They did all the experiments in their home bathrooms. We just had to think differently.”

Across WPI, faculty members and students made similar adjustments. Some wrote journal articles, read scientific reports, dug into data they’ already collected, applied for more grants, and planned new experiments for the day they could return to campus.

Research is no small enterprise at WPI. University researchers brought in a record $56 million in government, corporate, and private funding for research during the 2020 fiscal year. Even as WPI shut down nearly all campus operations, the work had to continue, and, in fact, public and private grants continued to flow to university researchers.

“It was a big lift,” says Bogdan Vernescu, vice provost for research. “While researchers could not access their labs anymore, we had a small team of emergency responders who continued to maintain the instruments that could not be shut down, and to keep the cell lines, tissue cultures, bacteria, and lab animals alive. We managed to do it well and minimized the impact of the shutdown on years of research. And we were successful, in that COVID was not spread in any of our labs as we gradually reopened those labs.”

Still, there is no getting around the fact that COVID-19 changed things.

Weeks ahead of the lab closures, Kristen Billiar, professor and head of the Biomedical Engineering Department, asked researchers in his department to prepare for limited campus access. Mammalian cell lines in the department’s Gateway Park labs were frozen in liquid nitrogen. One person, with approval from the university’s Coronavirus Emergency Response Team (CERT), regularly visited to keep the coolant flowing.

Amity Manning, assistant professor of biology and biotechnology, whose work focuses on cancer biology, say the process of moving her team’s work out of the lab showed her that a lot of prep and analysis of experiments can be done remotely, though it moves much more slowly.

“When we were remote, we couldn’t multitask as we normally would: performing new experiments while analyzing previous experiments and prepping for future experiments,” she says. “But a hidden benefit of slower momentum on some experiments was that we could focus more intently on side projects that might otherwise be overlooked for faster-moving experimental work. I learned how resilient and flexible the researchers in my lab are. They went above and beyond, accommodating crazy schedules and continuing our work.”

Another lesson for Manning is that she relies heavily on brief, informal interactions with her students and other researchers. Using online video conferencing for individual and group mentoring and project discussions worked well enough, but it didn’t accommodate spontaneous discussions.

“I really missed—and think the students did too—the mid-experiment check-ins and the ability to have students show up at my door with an exciting new piece of data to share,” she says. “Those small interactions are so fulfilling and motivating, and we just couldn’t recapitulate them with Zoom, email, or any other virtual platform we tried.”

Students of Haichong (Kai) Zhang, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and robotics engineering, worked late into the night for more than a week before the campus closed to make sure they’d have the data they needed to keep their work progressing.

“We just had to accommodate the situation,” says Zhang, who is developing a safer, more accurate way to detect prostate cancer. “It’s like preparing a lot of food before winter. When we saw this coming, we prepared a lot of data on our experiment. We gathered as much as possible so we could focus on data analysis and prove our hypotheses. We processed that data, and now we can publish it at a conference or in a journal.”

Zhang, who notes that the time out of his lab gave him the chance to apply for more grants, says he found that working from home forced researchers to be more creative and more intentional in communicating with each other to continue research in less-than-ideal conditions.

Four months after sending researchers home, WPI decided the time had come for a careful and deliberate return to campus—under tightly controlled conditions and in alignment with state and federal public health guidelines. The phased re-opening of labs required researchers to develop their own lab-specific operating plans built around social distancing, face coverings, scrupulous cleaning, and less in-person contact. Reviews by department heads, the Provost’s Office, an environmental health and safety official, associate deans, and CERT helped principal investigators adjust their plans, as needed.

Vernescu says a lot of thought was given to the order in which researchers would be allowed back in their on-campus labs. “We had to focus first,” he notes, “on research where, for instance, cultures and cell lines had to be attended to. We also prioritized researchers who had funding dependent on a calendar of milestones, research that had to start because otherwise we would have been unable to continue paying students and research staff, and research that was time sensitive and critical for the research, itself, or for the students and faculty. We had to gauge the urgency of the work.”

Manning says the impact of being away from her lab was significant and will be long lasting. “We are still wrapping up experiments that might otherwise have been completed a year ago,” she says. “And we are just starting to get back on track with experiments that were paused during the pandemic. These delays will, of course, have ramifications on timelines for publications and acquiring new funding. But the slowdown in research was worthwhile to keep everyone safe. I hope to take lessons learned to heart so I can continue to foster a productive and happy lab environment.”

While the pandemic had its costs for WPI’s research community, the time spent responding to the public health crisis has left the university well prepared should it face similar disruptions in the future.

“Because we did it well, we now have a plan for how to react if something like this ever happens again,” Vernescu says. “We have all the emergency procedures in place on how to safely navigate through a pandemic. After you’ve done it once you know how to do it better, and faster, if anything similar were to happen again.”