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![]() ![]() Cases and deaths skyrocketĪt home in San Paulo with her husband – a chemist who works for a Scottish company that produces and sells gas generators and must go into the office he manages some days – Rossi considers herself very lucky. Half of her students have two-month extensions and the rest have three-month extensions, depending on the particular funder. ‘That means that the students have more time to finish their PhDs … they are less stressed now,’ Rossi says. One positive development is that funding agencies in Brazil recently added two or three more months to ongoing research fellowships. She also has a live follow-up class three days later so those able to participate can have their questions answered. Because of this situation, Rossi records and archives her lessons so that students can watch them later. ‘Families also share a computer sometimes’. ‘In Brazil, internet access at home can be an issue for our students,’ she explains. These courses typically have about 70 students, but the live online classes usually have between 20 and 30 people logged in. Since classes went remote, undergraduate attendance has been spotty, according to Rossi. For remote instruction, Rossi is using the open-source learning management system Moodle. She is communicating with her team members virtually, meeting through online platforms like Zoom. The students present their seminars using Google Meets, and there are usually there about 50 people participating. Teleworking since 17 March, Rossi is currently teaching two undergraduate courses online – general chemistry and inorganic chemistry – and is also running mandatory seminars for graduate chemistry students remotely. ‘One of my concerns is power failures, or blackouts, that can occur during rain or wind storms, and are quite common in Brazil,’ she says. The head of the chemistry department sends Rossi and other lab directors a weekly report on the status of the labs. Lab technicians are conducting regular safety checks to make sure that equipment and stored materials are in good condition and that there is no water leakage. ![]() The major issues in closing were ensuring that the mass spectrometers were shut down, and that all gases into the lab were turned off. ‘At the moment, everything in my lab is paused,’ Rossi says. The university switched to online teaching at the beginning of March, and the research labs continued to operate for a few weeks before they too were locked down, except for those doing work related to fighting Covid-19. ‘Everybody wants to go back to work but we don’t know when,’ Rossi says. The pandemic struck Brazil in late February, and Rossi’s lab – which averages between 10 and 15 researchers – closed down in mid-March. Liane Rossi runs a nanomaterials and catalysis chemistry lab at the University of São Paulo, located in Brazil’s financial centre and one of the world’s most populous cities that she expects to be among the last in the country to reopen. Liane Rossi considers herself fortunate to be working comfortably from homeĭuring this difficult time, Chemistry World is checking in with chemists around the globe to see how they are weathering the Covid-19 pandemic. ![]()
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