key: cord-0883374-p5tgrngu
authors: Aydemir, Duygu; Ulusu, Nuriye N.
title: Commentary: Challenges for PhD students during COVID‐19 pandemic: Turning crisis into an opportunity
date: 2020-04-09
journal: Biochem Mol Biol Educ
DOI: 10.1002/bmb.21351
sha: 507798a0d0da59f5e0ab9fcc55109bd31a7e599c
doc_id: 883374
cord_uid: p5tgrngu

COVID‐19 results in the suspension of life all over the world. Universities suspended their academic activities except for online courses for undergrad and grad students. However, PhD students in both biochemistry and molecular biology fields must hold their experiments at the laboratories. Even under these extreme circumstances, the academic journey of a master's or PhD student should not be stopped; on contrary, they need to use these times to improve their knowledge related to their fields. Therefore, they can turn this COVID‐19 crisis into an opportunity for themselves.

People all over the world have been encountered with a novel pandemic named COVID-19, causing deaths of millions of people. Numbers of infected people and deaths are increasing every day worldwide and there are no cure has been found against COVID-19. Almost every country applies restrictions and sanctions to fight against this pandemic and protect the elderly population and people with chronic diseases, since they are categorized as risk groups. Thus, the young population has to follow these restrictions and self-isolation to block spreading COVID-19. 1, 2 Universities suspended academic activities except for online education, and PhD students working at the wet lab have encountered currently with the most challenging situation. Since PhD students both in the molecular biology and biochemistry fields need to perform constitutive work at the laboratories unlike other faculties like law, economy, or computational sciences, suspension of experimental works put them in an uncertain position. 3 Data, experiments, and competition in the biological sciences are increasing every day worldwide, and to be competent scientists, each PhD student should have extraordinary performance in their fields and have abilities and skills such as creativity, hardworking, and self-discipline. 4 COVID-19 pandemic is leading to the suspension of life worldwide, but the scientific world may be one of the most affected disciplines among other professions. However, the academic journey of PhD or master's students should not behold during this pandemic, since being a scientist is a lifelong journey. 4 During this pandemic, PhD students can use this time as an opportunity to widen their knowledge in their fields and read more papers related to their works. Maybe the most challenging situation during PhD life is keeping a balance between laboratory works and reading literature to gain knowledge about scientific developments. 5 In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic may suspend our experimental works, but we should not let this situation hold our academic carrier. This time can be managed effectively by reading literature, designing new experiments, writing and analyzing data of previous experiments, writing papers, and widening our scientific horizons in our fields. Thus, we can turn this COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity for ourselves in terms of our academic carrier.

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How to cite this article: Aydemir D, Ulusu NN. Commentary: Challenges for PhD students during COVID-19 pandemic: Turning crisis into an opportunity

The authors gratefully acknowledge the use of the services and facilities of the Koç University Research Center for Translational Medicine (KUTTAM), funded by the Presidency of Turkey, Presidency of Strategy and Budget. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Presidency of Strategy and Budget.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.ORCID Duygu Aydemir https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6449-2708 Nuriye N. Ulusu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3173-1389