From Bjarne – March 2020

Profilbilde Bjarne Robberstad
Foto: Eivind Senneset, UiB

The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is an unprecedented event for UiB and IGS.  While the situation represent big challenges, it also brings about new opportunities:

  • The closing of campus for example has shut all of us out of our daily working environment, but also means that:
    • Our educational staff and students are developing skills in online based education that otherwise would have taken years to achieve, including plans for online examination of master candidates
    • PhD defences have been brought online using Teams, which has made the events much more available for partners and other interested around the world, and attendances have been very high
    • We have maintained most of our meeting platforms in new formats, in addition to developing new ones
    • Emissions from commuting have come down, not to say time use
  • Travel restrictions makes it impossible to visit projects and colleagues, and to do field work. For example, a Ugandan post-doc in one of our projects was mandatorily quarantined at his arrival at Entebbe airport for 14 days at a personal cost of 100 USD per night, but also means that:
    • We are developing routines for cooperation that substantially reduces emission and our “global footprint”
    • We save travel related resources
    • We “meet” even more frequently than we used to
  • Project management and externally financed research has become more complicated, especially regarding field- and lab work, but there are also new opportunities. IGS is involved in a number of new research initiatives related to Corona epidemic, both in Norway and Low- and Middle Income countries.  We have mobilised our networks, and the epidemic may actually increase our involvement in externally funded projects. This illustrate large creative and constructive energy in our staff, which makes me very proud!

Most IGS staff, both academic and administrative, can consider themselves very lucky. Our salaries are safe and our welfare little affected by the close down of society, at least in foreseeable future.

We have one group who are more vulnerable: PhD candidates, who depend on field work and lab experiments that are disrupted by the close down. Many will experience that access to data and their projects get delayed, while their time limited stipends are running at full speed. They may rightfully worry whether it will be possible to finish their degrees in time. The university is working to get in place a system to support extension of PhD projects when this is necessary.  Meanwhile, please use your times effectively on tasks that do not depend on data, and communicate with your supervisors to understand your individual challenges and possibilities.

Lastly, we have a collective responsibility to reach out and look out for each other, so that none of our staff or candidates are lonely because of the close down.  Our Friday-jogging is of course suspended, but all initiatives such as online based quizzes would be mostly welcome.

Stay home – stay close!

Bjarne