Continuation of research projects requiring physical experimentation at a home during the university wind-down is prohibited.

The University cannot approve the use of private residence for research purposes. Such work at home raises a number of health and safety, and potential building and fire code related concerns that are subject to routine health and safety inspections and mitigation measure at the university laboratories and cannot be verified in a residential setting. These potential hazards include but are not limited to occupancy rating of the building (e.g. residential vs. research), electrical hazard associated with the use of the equipment (e.g. personnel safety, overload of circuitry, etc.), presence of untrained individuals in the research area, etc., none of which have been assessed by university.

Allowable remote research includes using computers for data driven analytics, social behavior type studies that can be conducted by audio/video conferencing, etc.

This guidance is consistent with the March 12, 2020 message from Deans Gay, Doyle and Stubbs clearly indicating that “Each Principal Investigator or group leader of a laboratory research program (experimental, computational, or otherwise) will be responsible for the coordination of a strategy to ramp-down laboratory research activities by Wednesday March 18th, with the expectation that such a period of suspended lab access will likely last at least six to eight weeks”. And the guidance to “devote your time to productive alternatives, such as writing grant proposals, reviewing articles and papers, writing thesis chapters, conducting analyses, compiling data and/or synthesizing important research”.