Abstract Scope |
The Molecular Foundry is a Nanoscale Science Research Center located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California. This knowledge-based User Facility hosts visiting scientists (“users”) to access leading-edge resources in instrumentation, analytical capabilities, and scientific expertise in nanoscale science. The COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges to conducting collaborative materials science research, but also catalyzed the development of new remote access modes. This talk focuses on strategies for maintaining research productivity and user access. Approaches include shift work to manage density, virtual meetings, targeted proposal calls, and a host of remote access tools including: training videos, holographic augmented reality, audio headsets, remote operation of select equipment, remote login for data processing, video conferencing during experiments, and telepresence robots. Since the local onset of the pandemic, we have hosted over 400 users from over 60 institutions at our research site, and facilitated the remote access of around 100 individuals as well. |