Current Campus Status
8/9/2024:
- Effective Monday, August 12, Morningside campus access is restricted to Columbia affiliates with a valid CUID and their registered guests at all times. For information about access points and more, please visit the Morningside Campus Access webpage.
- As always, all research-related visitors must follow the Compliance and Training Requirements for Visitors Involved in Research Activities.
Overview of Research Continuity
Columbia’s research enterprise is one of its greatest assets. Events such as hurricanes or other natural disasters, public health emergencies, or campus unrest have the potential to disrupt research at Columbia and inflict a high cost in terms of time and resources.
Columbia’s research enterprise is highly diverse and sophisticated. Programs depend on specialized equipment, materials and supplies, support services, and highly skilled people, including graduate students, postdocs, technicians, other researchers and faculty. Breakdowns or disruptions in any one of these elements can cause serious harm to ongoing research.
To mitigate the risk of disruption, all principal investigators should develop research continuity plans for their laboratories and research teams. The nature of the plan depends on the nature of the research in question, but the following common elements should be considered:
- Off-site back-up location for essential data
- Planning for preservation of unique research assets, such as specialized equipment or biological materials
- Identification of essential personnel
- Access to essential documents, books or other materials that enable remote research activity
Principal investigators are responsible for ensuring appropriate research continuity planning for their labs and research teams.
Definition of “Essential Personnel” for Research
The definition of essential personnel for research is:
Faculty, researchers (including postdoctoral researchers), students and staff whose presence on campus is required for research continuity purposes. Such purposes could include both “life-critical” processes, required to preserve the life of a research asset, and time-critical processes, needed to meet a critical deadline. Thus, research continuity purposes include, e.g. the need to:
- Preserve ongoing projects (e.g., tissue preservation);
- Protect instrumentation and other key research assets (climate control, supervised shut-downs, key maintenance);
- Receive and process pending arrivals of critical research assets;
- Care for research animals and essential cell lines;
- Ensure environmental health and safety in research spaces;
- Conduct research procedures required for the continuity of human subject research projects and/or safety of research participants. Clinical research conducted at CUIMC must follow CUIMC and NYP policies.
- Meet time-critical deadlines, depending on the nature of the emergency and the deadline in question, and as determined by the relevant research dean.
Identification of Essential Personnel for Research
Depending on the nature of the emergency and potential access restriction, campus may be open to all researchers, or only to some. If access to campus for research purposes must be restricted, research deans for each school are responsible for identifying the individuals in their school who are essential for research continuity purposes.
Principal investigators and project directors are responsible for maintaining an active roster of their team members, including whether each team member has life-critical or time-critical responsibilities that would require their physical presence on campus, and must provide this information to their research deans upon request.
For wet labs on the Morningside campus, the University will leverage the Laboratory Information Online Network (LION) system as an efficient mechanism to facilitate campus access for research continuity purposes. Accordingly, all Principal Investigators (PIs) are requested to log in to LION regularly and update their laboratory personnel roster. PIs should ensure that all their current team members are listed in LION, and that departed team members are removed. For questions, please visit the EH&S FAQs or contact [email protected].
Please be aware that laboratory personnel must be current with applicable Laboratory Safety Training (TC2150, TC4951 or TC0950) to be eligible for campus access as essential personnel. This training ensures that research personnel are prepared and can perform their essential functions safely, particularly during periods of modified campus operation. The LION system enables PIs to monitor the training status of their personnel so that they are eligible for access.
The relevant research dean will have access to the LION rosters of each PI’s personnel in their school, as a starting place in case access restrictions for researchers are needed. As we continue to enhance the LION system, PIs may be required to designate access categories in LION in the future.
For wet labs on other campuses, the relevant research dean will work with principal investigators and project directors to identify essential personnel who require campus access for research continuity purposes.
For computational, theoretical, social science, humanities and other research areas, each school’s research dean will work with the relevant department chairs and researchers to identify those individuals whose presence on campus is essential to research continuity.
Clinical research conducted at Columbia University Irving Medical Center is subject to CUIMC and New York Presbyterian campus access requirements and policies. As always, the safety of research participants is paramount.
Recent Announcements and Updates
Research Continuity Website
Dear Principal Investigators,
As we gear up for the fall semester, I want to highlight the importance of planning for not only new proposals, experiments and papers, but also the continuity of your research in the event of an emergency.