Environment submissions database

The most significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on research at RGU has been the temporary closure of research laboratories and the need to put some research on hold. Tasked by Scottish Government to deliver asymptomatic testing for students, RGU opened a test centre in November 2020. We recruited students from our healthcare courses to undertake the tests and have since tested over three thousand students. RGU used its COVID-19 funding from SFC (£675k) to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on our research. Priority was given to contract extension for postdoctoral staff where work was interrupted or where staff returned to frontline NHS duties. A pump priming call supported twelve projects to undertake research into the social and cultural impacts of COVID-19 (one of the conditions of the SFC funding). We funded open access costs for publications by female staff and supported our Researcher Developer programme to fund external wellbeing speakers for our PGR/ECR network, recognising the impact that remote working has had on these populations. We have provided funding to PGR students who accessed our hardship fund due to lack of employment or digital poverty and allocated UKRI Phase 2 funding (£4950) - enabling three PGR students to extend their studies. Two of RGU’s most important strategic research initiatives: the National Subsea Centre (NSC) and RGU Orkney have been significantly impacted by COVID-19. For RGU Orkney, this has been due to the inability to travel, with academics unable to visit the islands since March 2020. Several planned local and international meetings and events due to be held in Orkney were also cancelled. We have experienced delayed start dates, slow start-up periods and the need for extensions for associated projects. Opportunities to engage with local stakeholders reduced considerably with many simply not having the capacity to engage. As a result, developing new initiatives has been hindered but with our Development Manager on the ground in Orkney we have sustained relationships with stakeholders even though progress has been slow. In relation to NSC there has been slower progress than anticipated with stakeholder engagement, the impact of COVID-19 on the oil and gas sector, and delays to the formal launch of the new building. Much of our GCRF related funding went towards UK travel to ODA countries which subsequently had to be cancelled. Although we were unable to reallocate all our GCRF funds, we did reallocate £12k to support two new projects – one in antimicrobial resistance and the other to support capacity building workshops in entrepreneurship and innovation with our Mexican partners. The university is revising its research strategy due to the recent arrival of a new VPR (1st March 2021) and will be considering the impact of COVID-19. Whilst the impact of COVID-19 on some research has been detrimental, it has also created new opportunities and brought in new funding e.g. in relation to long COVID. This work fits well with our research expertise in long term conditions and we will support this emerging research area through our research investment.