Dear LASER PULSE Network Members,

This email is to provide an update on how the ongoing Covid-19  situation is affecting the operations of the LASER PULSE program. Like all of you, we have been busy recalibrating LASER PULSE programming to work virtually for the time being. This means, of course, that we are unable to travel, or to hold any meetings or conferences in person. The most challenging aspect of this is that none of us know how long we will need to put travel and personnel interactions on hold. 

This situation is affecting LASER’s work in the following ways:

1. Increasing the time necessary to make award announcements for awards in response to the East African RFA released on September 27, 2019, and possibly delaying startup activities for awardees.
2. Delaying review processes for Concept Notes responding to the Colombia RFA released on Feb 07, 2020. And also possibly delaying startup activities once awards are made. 
3. Delaying planning activities for an Ethiopia R4D conference planned for May 2020. A small team of LASER representatives from Purdue and Indiana Universities visited Addis Ababa in March to share LASER’s embedded research approach (link to document) with government ministers, academic leaders and researchers, and NGO representatives, and to promote the conference we plan for May. This conference will focus on resilience predictors and indicators for resilience, and on youth leadership in civic engagement. 
4. Postponing conferences, such as with the Vietnam R4D conference to have taken place in February 2020, but now postponed. We are looking into options to implement this conference virtually, just as with Ethiopia, possibly in Summer 2020. The focus areas for this conference are/will be Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) competitiveness, as well as air and water pollution.

LASER is currently working on approaches to hold conferences virtually, should this be our option as time draws nearer for these planned conference dates.  We are also looking to upgrade our website platform to enable easier interaction and searches for potential collaborative partners.   We will keep you informed of any major delays or changes in our planned activities, as well as developing plans for broader global outreach in our activities.

Thank you for being part of our community,

Andrea Burniske

Program Director, LASER PULSE

Purdue University

Kurtz Purdue Technology Center

1281 Win Hentschel Blvd, West Lafayette, IN 47906

Email: Andreaburniske@purdue.edu

Web: https://stemedhub.org/groups/laserpulse

Skype: Andrealaburniske