Happy Weird Holidays, 2020 to you all from us here at the Marclab for Connectomics.

What a strange, and fundamentally challenging year this has been for so many.  It has been lonely, frustrating, painful, and discouraging for many of us, and I encourage all to be a bit more patient, kind, and compassionate to those around you, as you don’t know what they are dealing with.

This pandemic has exacerbated the challenges that many are dealing with financially, socially, and emotionally. It has led to incredible bureaucracy for many of us trying to run labs. Personnel issues as folks in labs struggle with the issues in their lives not only working from home, but working from home during a pandemic, including child care, or care for other family members. Struggles with personal illness (COVID and otherwise). Financial issues related to employment. Struggles with depression and isolation. Inability to collaborate, or attend meetings that are critical to ongoing projects. Loss of research resources. Inability to get equipment or service on equipment… For some, this pandemic has resulting in a complete cessation of research activities.

Lab productivity has certainly been hugely impacted for many labs and the implications of that for their NIH or NSF funding is still unclear. Our productivity has certainly suffered this year, and we are absolutely behind on promised data generation. I don’t know how we are going to deal with that yet. The goal is to try and catch up, and while our lab is nominally working right now, all undergraduate, and graduate students are working remotely. Postdocs are partially working in the lab, and technicians are splitting their time. Until all the vaccines roll out, it is unclear how much longer this will have to continue. Fortunately for us, we are heavily computational and we’ve been able to still be productive on existing data. We also have generous lab space that we can spread out in for those who are working on campus. So, for now, we are forging ahead, managing as best as we can and attempting to be helpful to others where we can by processing tissues for other labs where we can to help them with their productivity problems for instance, and as always, reviewing manuscripts and grants in-between trying to get our manuscripts and grants in.

This pandemic has exacerbated the challenges that many are dealing with financially, socially, emotionally, and scientifically. And while this life gives and it takes, it also gives us opportunities to make decisions that allow us to help improve the lives of others, and be a force for good.

Happy Holidays from the Marclab for Connectomics.