"We want to keep connecting people across different groups"

What is the current mood of the scientific staff?
The colleagues that I talked to are slowly developing their working-from-home routines. For now, it seems like everybody is rising to the new challenges extremely well, especially with regard to teaching. Nevertheless, many well laid plans have thrown awry and there is some uncertainty, especially for longer-term planning.

What are the biggest challenges in this transition time where we are all trying to cope with the new situation? What are typical questions from doctoral students or senior researchers?
At the department, we have not yet received any specific new questions. We hope to proactively provide the answers to some FAQ, and some recommendations will follow soon.

From our parent organisation, AVETH, we hear that some doctoral students whose fixed-term annual contract ends during the emergency operations period are worried about whether or not their contract will be renewed if they cannot actively perform research at the moment. We are optimistic that ETH is aware of this question and will take measures to avoid negative consequences for our colleagues due to the coronavirus outbreak. 

Another key topic is childcare: now that schools are closed, we want the scientific staff to know that if they need additional time to take care of their children, that this time is considered as normal working hours. Until 4 April, there is no need for them to take vacation days. The same applies for employees who need to take care of sick relatives.

What tips do you have for your colleagues?              
Flattening the curve must be the top priority for everyone now. It is also important to maintain our teaching and research activities as well as possible in the current situation. There is a lot of good advice on how to work from home out there already. I would like to point the readers of this article to a external page collection of helpful tips from AVETH:  

In addition, good infrastructure is crucial to be able to work from home productively. In my view, it is worth investing in elementary items. Discuss with your supervisor whether the group can fund additional equipment that is needed under the new circumstances (e.g. a webcam, a license for a virtual collaboration tool, etc.). Consider picking up the big screen from your ETH office or any other hardware that could be helpful at your home office. Please also think about your thesis students and check whether they have all equipment they need to work efficiently and productively.

My most important tip, however, is to try to find your own routine and not to get frustrated easily if it takes some time to reach your usual level of productivity.

What measures is VMI taking to support the scientific staff during this extraordinary time?
We want to keep connecting people across different groups, and provide useful informative inputs (like our series of talks). Currently, we are working hard on moving some of our events online. In the meantime, we recommend that groups organise external page virtual coffee breaks to keep in touch. We will also organise a virtual board game night on Thursday, March 26th, which you can external page join via Zoom. In addition, we want to offer the talks from our Scientific Excellence & Well-Being programme via Zoom. Lastly, we are developing new event ideas, e.g. talks about how to be productive while working from home or how to maintain a healthy separation between work and free time when both are suddenly happening at home.