Global snapshot of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the research activities of materials scientists between Spring and Autumn 2020

ABSTRACT We conducted a global survey on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the research activities of materials scientists by distributing a questionnaire on 9 October 2020 with a response deadline of 23 October 2020. The questions covered issues such as access to labs, effectiveness of online conferences, and effects on doctoral students for the period covering the first lockdowns until the relaxation of restrictions in late September 2020 in many countries. The survey also included online interviews with eminent materials scientists who shared their local experiences during this period. The interviews were compiled as a series of audio conversations for The STAM Podcast that is freely available worldwide. Our findings included that the majority of institutes were not prepared for such a crisis; researchers in China, Japan, and Singapore were able to resume research much quicker – for example after approximately one month in Japan – than their counterparts in the US and Europe after the first lockdowns; researchers adapted to using virtual teleconferencing to maintain contact with colleagues; and doctoral students were the hardest hit by the pandemic with deep concerns about completing their research and career prospects. We hope that the analysis from this survey will enable the global materials science community to learn from each other’s experiences and move forward from the unprecedented circumstances created by the pandemic.


Introduction
As of writing this manuscript in mid-January 2021 the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has led to approximately 94 million

Questionnaire (complete list in supplementary information 1)
The questionnaire entitled 'Survey on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on research activities of materials scientists' covered general issues such as location, gender, age group and areas of research. It also delved into matters more pertinent with materials science such as maintenance of equipment during lockdown; methods for communicating with colleagues and effectiveness of virtual conferences; availability of extra-funding for restarting research; physical and mental health; and effects of the crisis on doctoral students. The survey was carried out by distributing emails with an embedded link to our Google Forms questionnaire to the following recipients: (1) our Science and Technology of Advanced Materials (STAM) Editorial Office mailing list of 2,000 people who attended events organized by STAM in Japan, USA, and Europe. The response rate from this group was 0.5%; (2) Members of an international audience of academics and graduate school students at a university in Japan, where we received 75 responses; (3) A direct mail campaign implemented using a database provided by Taylor and Francis (T&F), where 32,333 emails were successfully delivered to materials scientists worldwide, yielding 652 unique clicks (click through rate of 2%), which is typical for such campaigns. The T&F campaign yielded a total of 298 responses from a global distribution of respondents located in 35 countries. The responses were collected automatically with the Google Forms System and analysed as described below.

Interviews and the STAM Podcast
The Google Forms email survey was complemented with interviews of eminent materials scientists to gain direct insights into issues affecting them at the time of our conversations. The interviews were conducted using video teleconferencing technology and the results were compiled as a series of STAM Podcasts described as 'Materials research, education, and COVID-19: In conversation with materials scientists about the unique challenges facing materials scientists as they assess the impact of the unprecedented changes triggered by COVID-19'. Details about the interviewees can be found by visiting the STAM Insights website (https://stam-insights.e-materials.net/).
Notably, the first interview was conducted on 27 May 2020 with a scientist in the UK and the tenth and most recent, was recorded on 9 December 2020 with a researcher at an Australian university. The conversations reflect and are synchronised with the extensively reported 'waves' of the spread of the pandemic, beginning with the hard lockdowns declared in the Spring of 2020, followed by relaxations of restrictions on movement during Summer and Autumn, and the recent reintroduction of tough lockdown rules towards the end of 2020. The timeline and list of interviewees are available in Supplementary information 2. Figures 1 to 6 shows the responses to the general questions of the survey.     (1) 'Faculty member' includes professor, associate professor, and assistant professor. (2) 'Industry researcher' includes 'Industry scientist'.

Your current position
(3) 'Principal investigator' refers to respondents based at research institutes. (1) Engineering and structural materials, Energy materials, Materials for energy and environment, next-generation photovoltaics, and green technologies (2) Organic and soft materials (colloids, liquid crystals, gels, polymers), Energy materials, Nanostructured/ nanoscale materials and nanodevices, Materials for energy and environment, next-generation photovoltaics, and green technologies (3) Nanostructured/nanoscale materials and nanodevices, Materials for energy and environment, nextgeneration photovoltaics, and green technologies (4) Engineering and structural materials, Organic and soft materials (colloids, liquid crystals, gels, polymers), Nanostructured/nanoscale materials and nanodevices, Bio-inspired, biomedical, and biological materials; nanomedicine, and novel technologies for clinical and medical applications (5) Energy materials (6) Engineering and structural materials, Materials for 3D printing and additive manufacturing (7) Engineering and structural materials, Organic and soft materials (colloids, liquid crystals, gels, polymers) (8) Engineering and structural materials, Nanostructured/nanoscale materials and nanodevices (9) Advanced structural materials, materials for extreme conditions (10) Optical, magnetic and electronic device materials (11)  The responses showed that 54% of institutes were not prepared or took considerable time to react and only 44% had contingency plans in place. Furthermore, 33% of respondents had to shut down all equipment and 76% were allowed to enter their labs to check equipment during lockdown. However, our survey showed significant regional differences for access to labs restricted during the first lockdown. Specifically, labs in the UK and parts of the USA, Spain, and India were not accessible for the whole of the first lockdown. In contrast, scientists in Japan and Singapore were able to access the labs within 1 ~ 2 months after the first lockdown. The STAM Podcasts contain detailed accounts by scientists located in 10 countries of the state of their research during the first lockdowns [8][9][10].

Area(s) of research (check as many as appropriate)
Question: 'How did you maintain contact with your colleagues/research students during lockdown?' To stay connected with colleagues, an overwhelming 89% of respondents used video teleconferencing, and a surprisingly 10% were still able to maintain regular faceto-face interaction. Difficulties encountered in maintaining regular contact with colleagues included unstable internet (nearly 50%) and inability to have spontaneous 'coffee time' style meetings (ca. 44%) and 36% stated they suffered from fatigue after many hours of teleconferencing.
Questions: 'Did you experience isolation due to a lack of interaction with your colleagues?'; 'Has your institute offered support in overcoming any mental stress due to the lockdown?'; and 'How did you manage your physical health?' As many as 40% of respondents felt isolation throughout the crisis, 25% initially, and nearly 32% did not feel isolation at all. Also, 57% of the respondents did not receive mental health support from their institutes and 40% said they did get such support. Approximately 64% of respondents had attended virtual conferences, 35% had not, and as shown in Figure 7. only ca. 8% strongly disagreed with the statement that 'Do you agree that virtual conferences are an effective way to interact with colleagues?', indicating that virtual conferences were largely acceptable by the materials science community although as the comments below show, this was not without reservations. A selection of other comments related to the effectiveness of virtual conferences during the lockdown:

Question: 'What area(s) of research are likely to emerge and flourish in the post-COVID era?'
The responses to this question covered a wide range of topics that we have grouped as follows. As shown in Figure 8 approximately 85% of the doctoral students were able to restart their research by the deadline for this survey of 23 October 2021 and in response to the question, 'What are your concerns and worries now?' the most important issues were related to careers (65%) and restarting research (34%).

Findings from interviews published in The STAM Podcasts [8-10]
The podcasts were produced by Adarsh Sandhu following a generic list of topics and timeline to discuss issues related to research and education during the crisis. The interviewees were sent a list of topics that would be discussed in the conversations. The conversations were spontaneous and the final episodes published in The STAM Podcast were only edited for clarity of audio. Importantly, the discussions are snapshots of the thoughts and emotions of the interviewees as they navigated their way through the chaos caused by the spread of coronavirus in their own unique circumstances. The list of topics discussed with all the interviewees is given in Supplementary information 1.
The first conversation was with Professor Atsufumi Hirohata, University of York, UK, and recorded on May 27, 2020. The coronavirus was continuing to spread and the whole of the UK was under hard lockdown, with universities closed to both academics and students. The discussion focussed on the complete stoppage of research activities, merits of online teaching from both sides of the screen, challenges of objective assessment with the new and omnipresent video conference technology, and the consequences for academia if high school students were not able to sit their university entrance exams for 2020. Professor Hirohata's own local experiences of the difficulties of not being able to do research, virtual conferences, and concerns about doctoral students and their careers concur with the wider global results obtained from our questionnaire.
In contrast to the almost complete lack of mobility and inability to research in the UK, the conversation with Dr Roland Hany at Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) on 9 June 2020, was more relaxed as the spread of coronavirus in Switzerland had been brought under control and Dr Hany was resuming research based on strict safety protocols introduced by his institute. A similar sense of calm was present in discussions with Professor Hong Lin at Tsinghua University in Beijing (June 13, 2020) and Professor Katsuhiko Ariga, NIMS in Japan (June 18, 2020).
But such feelings were not apparent during conversations with Professor Arindam Ghosh, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India (June 22, 2020) and Professor Daniel Ortega Ponce, Universidad de Cádiz/IMDEA Nanoscience, Spain (June 24, 2020), where their institutes were still under strict lockdown.
The conversation with Professor James K. Gimzewski, University of California, Los Angeles (July 2020), offered his deep insights into the social issues engulfing the USA at the time. And notably, the discussion also highlighted how materials scientists were continuing to adapt and innovate to overcome the severe limitations to personal mobility. Specifically, Professor Gimzewski shared his views about establishing global robot-based hubs to perform experiments on chemical synthesis for both research and education by coupling state-of-the-art machine control technology with telecommunications.

Conclusions
Now, as we write this paper in mid-Jan 2021 the Covid-19 coronavirus continuous to spread across the world. The development, approval, and roll out of vaccines offers hope as another wave of lockdowns are implemented worldwide amidst concerns about the discovery of variants of Covid-19 in the UK and South Africa.
Our survey was carried out during the first wave of global lockdowns covering the period March to October 2020, when research institutes initially shut down and some were able to restart activities in late June. Some countries in Asia were able to quickly control the spread of coronavirus thereby enabling researchers and grad-students to restart their research between June and August. The STAM Podcast interviews recorded between June and September 2020 with researchers in China and Japan offer direct insights into the situation in these countries at the time, and the conversations are in sharp contrast to those with materials scientists based in the US, India, and Europe, where there were still severe lockdowns [8][9][10][11].
The survey showed the materials science community to be resilient and adaptive to overcome limitations imposed by restrictions to mobility as exemplified by the proposal for 'robot-based hubs' to perform remote chemical synthesis similar to astronomers who use remote control to move massive telescopes located all over the world.
Responses from doctoral students highlighted their 'fear' and uncertainty as their work suddenly came to a halt and they worried about their careers. But grad-students also learnt to move forward by using their time to reassess previous data with a view to publishing papers and planning their research.
We hope that the results of this survey will offer a timely resource for the materials science community to learn from each other's experiences and be able to adapt and move forward from chaos inflicted on their research by the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus.
Unfortunately, almost one year after the first confirmed cases of Covid-19 outside of China, many of us are once again under strict lockdown, but with the glimmer of hope that mass vaccinations will bring relief to our plight. As the world moves into 2021, we want to continue collate and share the experiences of scientists in the materials science community and are planning to conduct another survey later this year to update our findings for 2020.