Environment submissions database

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant perturbations to research within our institution. Within weeks of the Government’s announcement of lockdown measures we migrated many of our key operations online. The University has driven eight key workstreams: Research; Student and Staff Wellbeing; Teaching and Student Experience; Estate and Accommodation; Epidemiology; Community Support; External Relations; and Communications. We have supported our greatest asset, our staff and students, for example by providing over 90% of our PGRs with at least 3 months of discounted time and committing over GBP1,200,000 in funded extensions to these students. We have allocated GBP2,590,000 funding from SFC and UKRI CoA to extend employment of research staff, and through open calls to restart impacted research. We also enabled research staff coming to the end of their contract to apply for extended access to the University, including Library resources, IT facilities, careers advice and opportunities offered by Organisational and Staff Development Services. Formal and informal feedback indicates that our staff have felt supported by these measures. Our fieldwork and mobility opportunities have been severely curtailed, and we have devoted significant resources to developing approaches enabling online human research, allowing labs and facilities to operate in a COVID-19 safe manner as well as enabling staff to work from home. We have developed protocols, risk assessments and ethics procedures to be able to restart face-to-face research and provided robust arrangements to ensure the welfare of animals within our research facilities. Amidst the COVID-19 challenges we have provided a comprehensive response to the global efforts to understand and control the pandemic and its consequences, by, for example: looking into the experience of minorities in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic; measuring the quality of online interaction for social connectedness; research on the use of UVC light to deactivate the SARS-CoV2 virus; research on examining the effects of COVID-19 on teachers’ sense of agency; a GBP900,000 NHIR grant to tackle COVID-19 and Antimicrobial Resistance in East-Africa; a study of how the pandemic is affecting research culture at HEIs. Pneumagen Ltd, a University spin-out company, secured GBP4,000,000 external investment to test its Neumifil™ drug against COVID-19. We have provided members for SAGE, SPI-B (the Behavioural Science Advisory group to the UK Government), Independent SAGE, and the COVID-19 advisory Group that reports to the Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist (Health), led by our Dean of Medicine who is seconded to the post. Our staff are also members of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) – an expert committee of the UK Department of Health; and one of our staff, seconded in Public Health Scotland, has been responsible of the integration of SARS-CoV-2 genomics into the UK COVID-19 public health response. In order to support all of these activities we have invested over GBP7,000,000 in our research, researchers and estate. This includes funding from SFC, UKRI CoA and competitive funding as well as commercial activities.