Hope and more hope – Our students cope with COVID-19

Among our current students are the shining stars of tomorrow’s global research scene. Disrupted by the insidious pandemic, their training period was transformed. How did the pandemic change their research project and their learning, and in doing so, how did it reveal their character? Four young next-generation researchers tell their COVID-19 stories.

In Marie-Claude Bourgeois-Daigneault’s laboratory (Cancer research theme), Karen Geoffroy could almost be considered one of the senior researchers. But it’s all relative. This doctoral student began working in the laboratory in September 2019, only two months after it opened. The dynamic researcher sums up her COVID‑19 experience in one word: ADAPTATION.

Even though she had to switch to full-time remote work overnight, she didn’t waste a minute of her time away from the lab bench. She updated her knowledge of cancer and oncolytic viruses, her specialty, processed experimental data collected before the pandemic and co-authored a literature review with her mentor.

“I also took advantage of the time to virtually defend my doctoral thesis in pharmacy in France at the end of May 2020. Two days later, the Research Centre reopened its labs and allowed us to resume our projects. Pandemic or not, our lab continued to be very active. Cancer doesn’t take a break.”

There’s no doubt that the forced suspension of activities impacted the progress on her doctorate and the extent to which she could network at conferences, so essential at this phase of one’s scientific career. However, it did not prevent her from appreciating how quickly the research teams mobilized in the fight against COVID‑19, as well as their solidarity and willingness to share knowledge in a sector that is usually so competitive.

Isolated from her family in France, she took the time to reconnect with friends and relatives she hadn’t talked to for a long time, and for no particular reason. “After all, despite the pandemic, there’s still the human side of life.”