Chemistry in the time of the coronavirus
Laura L. Howes · C&EN Global Enterprise · 2020
Since the outbreak of a novel coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 started at the end of 2019, countries around the world have been working to contain the spread. As the numbers of cases and deaths continue to rise, travel and work are being disrupted, but researchers are also racing to find out as much as they can about the virus and how to treat it. Two weeks ago, C&EN asked scientists how they’re continuing their work in the face of these disruptions. Here are a few of their stories. Luis Pedro Coelho’s Big Data Biology Lab at Fudan University has been working remotely for over a month now. In late January, he says, everyone left Shanghai for the spring festival break, and then nobody came back. The university had closed to try to halt the spread of the virus. Coelho’s lab works almost exclusively on computational projects, so experiments do not need