The pandemic became a serious challenge for the scientific community confining a living communication and access to infrastructure. The latter is especially important for experimentalists. Fortunately, the tabletops experiments in university labs do not need the involvement of a lot of personal and can be realized during the pandemic, in a shortened format, of course. However, I think there are two main troubles here:
1. The confinement of joint work with visiting colleagues
2. The restricted student involvement in the labs.
Personally, I am a theorist and can work remotely. The problem of cooperation between colleagues and different groups was moderated by numerous on-line seminars, presentations, and meetings. Surprisingly, there is some positive development in such remote communication. Namely, I participated efficiently in three prestigious virtual conferences during this period. Of course, virtual meetings cannot replace live communication but, I guess, would have far-reaching implications on the scientific community at post-pandemic times.
I guess that the important problem at these critical times is financial. A slowdown in the prospect project’s evaluation requires their prolongation. In particular, it could open the ready access for students to a “living physics” at post-pandemic times.
Vladimir Kalashnikov
