Letters to the Editor—April 20, 2020

The experimentalists at a large nuclear physics laboratory like the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) only get a few days of precious beam time per year, so they have evolved into major “don’t panic and find a solution” type of people. In a situation like the one we have now, with NSCL shut down, our solution is to analyze existing data, run simulations, write papers, and plan for the future. Research continues full speed as much as possible. But some things are harder to solve than others. The frustration of the graduate student who prepared for months to run a thesis experiment that never happened. The stress of the postdoc who was supposed to get new data to analyze and publish before their appointment ended. The worry of a new faculty member who doesn’t have that much old data sitting in a drawer and still has a ticking clock for tenure. That is why it is more important than ever to connect with each other, to be flexible, and to find solutions “outside of the box.”

– Artemis Spyrou is a professor at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and in the Department of Physics & Astronomy of Michigan State University.

In a crisis, you have to be open to pivoting. The job you were working towards in graduate school may not be the job that you obtain. In 2008, I imagined that I would practice law in Washington, DC, for my entire career. But after the market crash, there were massive layoffs within the legal field, and Washington, DC, was hit pretty hard. This new terrain required me to move to Philadelphia, away from my friends and family. About one year later, due to more market shifts, my firm transferred me to its Silicon Valley office. These changes took me from patent prosecution to patent litigation, a move requiring a very different set of skills. Surprisingly, I really fell in love with patent litigation, an area in which I never imagined I’d practice during law school.

The skills I had gained from studying electrical engineering gave me the flexibility to move between patent law areas. Physics expertise offers similar flexibility. So my advice is to be open to those opportunities that you may not have considered but for the current troubling situation. They may turn out to surprise you in many positive and unexpected ways.

– Tiffany Nichols is a doctoral candidate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University and the Chair of the APS Forum on Graduate Student Affairs. She is also a licensed attorney.

I head an experimental physics group that works on nanodevices at low temperature. Staff can access the laboratory. But the students who normally run our low temperature system and collect data are still in quarantine, so all experimental work has basically stopped. Even though our group still regularly meets online, discussing results and writing them up has become less efficient. Feedback from referees of papers also appears to take longer, and it’s not possible to do more experiments if they are required.

However, the fact that conferences and meetings have been canceled, postponed, or moved online provides me with the rare opportunity to spend more time in the lab. During the last two and half months, I built new optical setups for future experiments, and I did general maintenance on all of our experimental facilities. My students have been encouraged to think about their work more deeply and to perform more calculations and simulations remotely. As such, they have come up with new hypotheses and ideas. I hope that we can get back to normal soon, to test these ideas experimentally with the new optical setup.

– Xiulai Xu is a Professor in the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Wuhan, where I live, was locked down on Jan. 23. But I had already stopped going to the office a few days earlier because I knew the novel coronavirus was spreading in our city. It was then near the Chinese Spring Festival. Traditionally, that is the time for us to return to our hometowns to reunite with our families, but we could not leave the city. The life in quarantine is difficult, especially in the holiday season, but we had to go through with it.

All 20 students in my group had already returned home for the Spring Festival vacation before the lockdown. But we were able to carry out instruction and collaboration smoothly online. Theoretical investigations were nearly unaffected, while the experimental side came completely to a halt. There were fewer travels and daily affairs, and that helped one to focus on work. I occasionally worked as a volunteer, helping the residents in my community.

The lockdown of our city was lifted on April 8, and life in the city is gradually returning to normal. I am looking forward to entering my office soon. Like in Wuhan, the victory over COVID-19 will be gained everywhere in the world!

– Zhengyou Liu is a chair professor in the School of Physics and Technology at Wuhan University, China.