By Amel Alhashimi, University of East London
In recent months, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has sent ripples across the world, and dramatically changed our lives. If I’m honest, when the World Health Organisation officially declared that COVID-19 is a global pandemic on 11 March, I still thought that we could contain its spread in a few weeks, and that it would blow over like swine flu, SARS, MERS or Ebola. Little did I know how much this was going to affect us.
I am a self-funded PhD student in my second year at the University of East London (UEL) investigating the effect of different types of smoking on the autonomic control of the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems.
To protect students and staff, UEL suspended all lectures and attendance for undergraduates and some postgraduates. When this happened, I started to panic, as a big part of my data collection involved testing participants face to face. I am at a crucial stage in my research where collecting data is most important to progressing my PhD. Soon after, the first announcement came that the university labs closed and participant testing would not be allowed for probably many weeks or months. This means that I may not be able to carry out any experiments until we find a vaccine.
Studying a PhD is already a challenge and with this new situation, I had to think of a way to overcome this issue. I started to look for a solution and I decided, with the help of my supervisors, to pursue more lab-based testing. Hopefully when lockdown measures are eased, I can carry out the lab-based experiments right away and start collecting data. Thankfully, part of my PhD consists of lab experiments (testing the effect of the three methods of smoking on cell culture). I just needed to enhance the protocol further and collect more data using these methods. I immediately started drafting protocols and submit them to my supervisor as I heard labs would be opening soon.
The tricky part is the face-to-face participant testing, I had to recruit around 150 or preferably more participants to carry out my experiments. This is not possible yet, and won’t be for at least the next few weeks. Therefore, I have decided to test the long-term effect of smoking. That way, I can use much fewer participants and test them over a 24-hour period. This could be a very practical solution as I can give them the equipment, show them how to fit it, and let it collect data for 24hrs. I started drafting the protocol and trying to find, borrow and purchase portable equipment.
I still have no idea when I will be able to do these studies, as social distancing and lockdown are still in place. I am volunteering in my community, looking after my parents who are both considered high risk, and doing my bit for this great nation.
I am sure many students share similar problems and concerns with me and I want to assure them that we are all in this together. One thing I have learnt is the importance of staying in touch with your supervisors, expressing your concerns and trying to find a solution together. Thankfully I have two experienced supervisors and they helped me through this. I strongly advise my colleagues to find a way to do their studies with minimum contact by collecting data over longer period of time. You can tweak your protocol using portable equipment to do the same experiment. Also, I really recommend doing more lab-based studies as it is more likely labs will open for us before anything else. Finally, the best way to use your time effectively during lockdown is to develop your literature review as it will greatly help in writing up your thesis or publications in the future. We usually don’t have the luxury of time to do a more thorough literature review but now it is possible.
Humanity has defeated many pandemics and we will defeat this one, coming back stronger and better.