Following discussions relating to a range of issues around the proposed reopening of Chemistry (and other) research laboratories at UK Universities UCSF held its first Virtual meeting. This page provides a brief overview of the meeting and some associated information. The meeting was attended by almost 100 individuals representing scientific research areas throughout the UK and enormous thanks must go to the organisers who worked behind the scenes to set everything up and ensure it ran smoothly. The meeting was addressed by Prof. Colin Pulham, University of Edinburgh and current Chair of Heads of Chemistry UK (HCUK), who outlined the challenges and issues around the ongoing closures and how these could best be tackled (slides available to view below). A number of members provided presentations and a wide ranging and stimulating discussion was held around the topics:
It became clear that given the different situations faced across the country (variations around national guidance and timescales) that a "one size fits all" approach would be difficult to implement, matters arising were, but not limited to:
There are a great many challenges posed by the ongoing situation and each University will be moving at their own pace to implement safe working environments for their staff and students, whilst also ensuring that the core research activities can be restarted in a controlled manner. A number of Universities have already implemented processes and procedures and we look forward to hearing about these in the future:
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