Protecting Research Operations

Safe buildings. Safe research spaces. Safe people.

As a Tier I research institution, Purdue made it a priority to advance its research mission safely amid the COVID-19 crisis . More than 95% of the 1,200 research spaces and core labs across campus — including 7,000 researchers — was back online under COVID-19 protocols by June 30, 2020, within three months of the pandemic shutdown. This was accomplished by:

• Individually assessing and implementing safety measures in more than 100 buildings.
• Reviewing and approving more than 1,200 standard operating procedures (SOPs) after requiring all principal investigators to create and submit these for their particular research space to address PPE requirements, equipment layout, capacity restrictions and other protocols to ensure safe operations within their space.
• Creating a Research Safety Monitoring Team to inspect all research spaces and ensure compliance with new SOPs. To date, more than 3,600 inspections have been completed, with more than 95% in compliance.

To ensure safe research operations, principal investigators have continued to update SOPs for any layout or personnel changes, with information automatically incorporated into Protect Purdue’s sophisticated contact tracing system. During the 2020-21 academic year, the diligence demonstrated by the over 500 research faculty and scholars, 370 postdocs, 3,100 graduate students and 400 undergraduates accessing campus research facilities has resulted in only one potential transmission of the COVID-19 virus in a lab.