Return to Research

Return to research: Improving astronaut health for next gen space missions

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 19:17:38 +0000

Return to research: Improving astronaut health for next gen space missions Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/23/2020 - 13:17

Jeff Zehnder

Life is returning to some semblance of normal for students in Assistant Professor Torin Clark’s laboratory on campus. A faculty member in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, his team’s research focuses on astronaut health on long-term space missions. When much of campus shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, most of their work came to a standstill – some of Clark’s equipment takes up entire rooms and is not conducive to “work from home.”

With new health policies and procedures in place at CU Boulder, research activities are resuming in modified form. Clark shared his experience with returning to research:

How is your lab restarting research after so much time away?

We weren’t doing much research in the Aerospace Building for about three months. We have a lot of really large equipment that is designed to simulate conditions in space that we can’t work on outside the lab – our Aerospace Research Simulator or Dream Chaser capsule, the tilt translation sled, the human centrifuge.

Our work focuses on astronauts and aerospace applications, but it has impacts for health here on Earth, particularly connected to falls in the elderly, which are a leading cause of hospitalizations and even death. It’s related to your inner ear and vestibular system, which are critical to balance.

Getting back into the building even in a limited way is really positive. Even a small amount of access enables a lot. We can get in for a few hours to run experiments and then do data analysis and software from home.

What are the biggest challenges as you restart? How are you addressing them?

The delays are tough, particularly for shorter-duration projects. We have research with Lockheed Martin that will be delivered in November that will be a challenge timing-wise. For longer-term projects we've been able to pivot and delay some hands-on work to emphasize computation and modeling for the time being.

What precautions are you taking to stay safe?

We're coordinating schedules so there's not too many people. There are helpful guidelines from campus and the aerospace department. We have very low occupancy and are maintaining physical distancing, always wearing masks, and sanitizing work spaces before and after use. In addition, there are general restrictions on building access and a daily health history questionnaire.

As a team we had to get everyone on the same page and make sure everyone understood the procedures. We've had teleconferences and email exchanges to discuss logistics. I have about 15 students total including undergraduate researchers, but only a few of them are in the building per day.

What changes, postponements or issues are you facing in your research?

We rely on human subjects for some of our work and have just recently received approval to start that again. Thankfully the research that we're doing, subjects don't have to take off masks and can maintain physical distance. But in some cases the types of human subject experiments we perform require multiple operators in addition to the subject, which is constrained by our room capacity restrictions.

Have you noticed any benefits to your time away from campus?

In normal times there can be a desire to jump in and run experiments as quickly as possible for data collection because you're excited and want to see the results, but we're being much more thorough and thoughtful. It is helping us develop stronger models and theories to do experiments later, which should lead to better research long-term...

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Return to Research: Busy civil engineering lab sets new research priorities

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 22:32:52 +0000

Return to Research: Busy civil engineering lab sets new research priorities Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/16/2020 - 16:32

Mija Hubler, assistant professor in civil, environmental and architectural engineering, said her group was excited to restart their research, even though they’re juggling multiple projects with only two-thirds of the PhD students and postdoctoral researchers.

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Return to Research: Animal Inspired Movement and Robotics Lab hits the ground running

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 20:15:26 +0000

Return to Research: Animal Inspired Movement and Robotics Lab hits the ground running Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/30/2020 - 14:15

CU Boulder researchers are gradually and safely returning to campus to continue their work in the lab. Read about Assistant Professor Kaushik Jayaram and graduate student Parker McDonnell's return to research.

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'Our team came out stronger': Instrumentation facility adapts to COVID-19

Anonymous — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 21:26:38 +0000

'Our team came out stronger': Instrumentation facility adapts to COVID-19 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/29/2020 - 15:26

CU Boulder is in the midst of a phased return to on-campus research and creative work in summer 2020. In this series, CU Engineering researchers share tips, tricks and takeaways as they navigate a new approach to research prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Aju Jugessur, director of the Colorado Shared Instrumentation in Nanofabrication and Characterization (COSINC) Facility, shares the outlook from his labs.

Tomoko Borsa, facility manager for the COSINC Characterization Facility, uses an instrument as the facility slowly resumes research activities.

How many people are currently back to work in your labs? What’s the general mood about returning?

Four of our staff have returned, and the approach currently is that only their presence is needed onsite; otherwise, working remotely continues. We are excited to return and we are following the campus safety guidelines, including the specific ones that have been developed for our center. Initially, we were all nervous, but we have now adjusted well, and wearing PPE and adhering to the safety guidelines is our new normal, perhaps for a very long time.

How is your lab restarting research after several months away? What are your priorities now?

There is no doubt that there were several delays on some critical projects. However, most of them were able to obtain deadline extensions, in particular, the ones with project funding deadlines.

During the remote work, we were able to prepare and work on several research proposals that will benefit our facilities. We were able to develop several webinars in collaboration with our instrument vendors that were offered to our user community. It was also a time to review our facility policies, reach out to prospective industry partners and update our website.

During the two-and-a-half months that we were away, we had to turn down most of our instrumentation, as no staff would be onsite to monitor any issues. When we returned, we had to bring the instrumentation back up again, which took almost a week. In the ramping-up process, a couple of our instruments needed some repairs due to not being in use for several weeks.

While we were away, we were planning for our return by developing the safety guidelines that will enable our users and staff to work safely in our facilities. After several consultations and discussion with similar facilities across the U.S. and receiving the campus directions, we have developed a specific set of guidelines for our own center that ensures the safety of our users and staff is the priority.

In addition, we have also designed some features of social distancing on our instrument scheduling system by taking into account the room occupancy limit, which is only one person at a time, and the air changes per hour in every room. Moreover, we have designed a mobile remote training system that consists of remote connection to the instrument and live video feed where our staff can train users in real-time. Our operations during this pandemic have surely changed as our staff are doing more of the user sample processing to maintain a limit on users present onsite, but this has impacted the throughput. As we ramp up our operations, we will need to be more creative on how we may allow more users to come in and use our facilities.

What precautions are you taking to stay safe?

We have developed a list of precautions and guidelines that each user has to review and sign before access is provided. The main ones are quite generic such as wash hands, wear a mask and wipe down instruments after every use.

In addition to the steps that campus has recommended, we have also obtained data on air changes per hour in each of the rooms in COSINC. The air changes per hour is basically the number of times fresh air is pulled from outside to replace the air in the space, which is not recycled air. In COSINC facilities, the ACH varies from two to 20 air changes per hour, with the highest being in our cleanroom facility. The higher the ACH, the better it is in flushing out airborne contaminants. We have used data on the recommended ACH from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Based on this, we have designed the buffer time needed between instrument bookings or new users entering the rooms. In some cases, the wait times between users accessing the rooms can be up to two to three hours. In combination with the mandatory need to wear PPE, wash hands, and maintain social distancing, the additional buffer time implemented for user access will keep our staff and users safer.

We also have implemented a QR code system at each of our facilities' main entrances. Each user and staff are required to scan in and out of the lab rooms and spaces using their mobile device during every visit. This ensures that we have a record of user information and the actual times they spend in our facilities, and the data will become useful when there is a need to track and trace if there is an infection.

What are the biggest challenges and successes as you restart?

The biggest challenge is to ensure that all the new safety procedures developed will work. We have never operated in this mode. COSINC is a shared facility, with users coming to our facilities from all across campus and the greater Denver area. As we operate over the next few weeks, we need to monitor how well the safety guidelines are working and ensure that all users are adhering to these guidelines.

The other challenge is to balance the need for allowing more users to come in with the safety of our users and staff. Our approach is to make the necessary adjustments as the situation evolves and, at times, we will need to make changes on the fly.

I think that our team came out stronger after our time away from campus as we were communicating and listening to each other more often about the challenges of operating our facilities during this pandemic, including any personal issues that we were facing.

We have also realized that we can develop technologies that will allow us to train and advise users remotely and, in some cases, operate the instrumentation as well. Due to this shutdown, we now have developed some basic technologies where we can remotely guide users in real time on the operation of various instruments. In addition, we are considering further developing and implementing more advanced technologies to enable remote training and instrument operation in real time.

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Return to Research: A new normal for the Labbe Lab

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Jun 2020 22:05:15 +0000

Return to Research: A new normal for the Labbe Lab Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/26/2020 - 16:05

Oksana Schuppan

CU Boulder researchers are gradually and safely returning to campus to continue their work in the lab. Read about Assistant Professor Nicole Labbe's return to research.

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Robotics researchers ready to start field-testing their code

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 15:44:06 +0000

Robotics researchers ready to start field-testing their code Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/24/2020 - 09:44

Emily Adams

Assistant Professor Chris Heckman laughs a little at the idea of a “return to research.”

“What have we been doing all this time?” he jokes.

As computer scientists, his team of robotics researchers is mostly able to work remotely even when there’s not a global pandemic. He also said they took time to prepare their lab equipment for remote work in late February as universities across the country started to close.

“For months now, students have had robots sitting next to them at home,” he said. “Luckily, our equipment is somewhat portable.”

Still, he said, COVID-19 has had an effect on their projects.

“On certain things we have had a burst of productivity,” he said. “But in other areas we've seen challenges in trying to meet our obligations, especially in the testing and experimentation.”

Out of 20 students who work in the lab, five have been approved to head back to their space in the ECES wing of the Engineering Center. There, they’ll be able to field-test the software they’ve been developing in a simulation platform, which they also had to build from scratch to accommodate remote teamwork.

Heckman has also been working closely with the other principal investigators on the ongoing DARPA Subterranean Challenge project. While DARPA shifted the dates for the next stage of the competition back by a few months, they still need to keep making progress on their interdisciplinary work.

“We've been able to request authorization for Sean Humbert and Eric Frew’s students to come into the lab and work as a team toward that project,” Heckman said. “We need to use some of Eric's lab space out in the aerospace building that has its own policies attached to it. So that means that my students are learning the policies to go back to our lab, as well as his motion-capture high bay lab in the aerospace building, since they are pretty different.”

As they plan the next phase of research activities, Heckman is also working to make sure the graduate students who are staying home don’t feel too isolated. He hosts weekly virtual lunches for his team and open office hours throughout the week so students can pop in to talk.

“In fact, at one point, one of my PhD students actually offered to go get beer, deliver it to each of my group members’ homes, and leave it on their doorstep,” he said. “And then we all sat in our respective outdoor areas and were able to talk about how things were going.”

Heckman said he thinks COVID-19 will lead to some longer-term shifts in the way labs operate, like even more flexibility for remote work and reconfiguring of office spaces for more physical distance between workspaces. But for the time being, he’s glad that CU Boulder has been supportive and innovative in making sure on-campus research activities can continue.

“Our university, in general, has been very light on their feet to be able to come up with new solutions – things that they've never done before – to get people back to work when they decided that it was time to get people back to work,” he said.

Out of 20 students who work in Chris Heckman's lab, five have been approved to head back to their space in the ECES wing of the Engineering Center. There, they’ll be able to field-test the software they’ve been developing in a simulation platform, which they also had to build from scratch to accommodate remote teamwork.

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Adapting research to social distancing on campus

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 22:38:37 +0000

Adapting research to social distancing on campus Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/22/2020 - 16:38

Jeff Zehnder

Tobias Niederwieser and Alexander Hoehn in a BioServe laboratory with five FRIDGE units slated for delivery to NASA and the International Space Station. Two of the units shipped to the space agency Thursday, June 18.

BioServe Space Technologies shares insights from three months of research largely alone on campus

After large portions of the �� shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, you could practically hear a pin drop on campus. But in the Aerospace Building, an array of space-critical research projects at BioServe Space Technologies has continued.

BioServe designs, builds and operates life-science equipment and experiments for NASA and private space contractors used on the International Space Station. With rocket launches still on the calendar, the center’s work had to go on even as much of campus shuttered.

“Very early on, NASA sent notice that all work associated with launches and the ISS was to be considered mission essential/critical and due dates would not be changing,” said Stefanie Countryman, director of BioServe.

Their workers have been on the forefront of health and safety changes implemented by CU Boulder, requiring on-campus employees to use personal protective equipment, follow new safety procedures, and maintain strict social distancing. They say patience and flexibility will be essential for other researchers as modified activities resume on campus.

"The pace of some things is slower because on-site capacity is reduced," said Matt Vellone, a BioServe payload engineer. “Work needs to be planned differently in order to still get multiple projects moving forward. Since external deadlines haven't been relaxed, there's more multitasking and nontraditional scheduling."

Vellone and others in BioServe emphasized work time flexibility – "early mornings, later evenings, weekends" – for hitting deadlines. The inability to gather and work in groups has required people to come in at odd hours. Although not ideal, their team has been understanding.

The end of in-person meetings has been a double-edged sword.

"Communication is not the same. You can focus more on your work, but it's not conducive to hallway discussions and impromptu meetings that often end up being incredibly helpful to identifying issues and solving them throughout the day," Countryman said.

BioServe Senior Research Associate Alexander Hoehn agreed.

"Communication is less efficient. There’s a lack of ad-hoc hallway coordination, but the quiet has also been great for productivity – there’s less nuisance and interruption. It's definitely a less stressful and more productive environment," Hoehn said.

Countryman emphasized the importance of scheduling online video meetings to bridge the discussion gap.

"Video conferencing as opposed to teleconferencing makes a big difference. I didn’t realize how much until I got a video camera,” Countryman said. “Even if it is only online, seeing someone’s face goes a long way to feeling like you are all still part of a team.”

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