The coronavirus outbreak has brought challenges to all of our lives, but UC employees systemwide are banding together in solidarity, giving back within their locations and their communities. Here are some stories of how UC’s community is coming together to make a difference during this challenging time.
Note: We know this story isn’t exhaustive — and we’d love to hear more good news! Share how your UC location is giving back in the comment section beneath this article.
From conceptive research to tangible support
- At UC Irvine, a multidisciplinary lab team rallied to produce viral transport media (the liquid used to preserve coronavirus testing samples) for doctors at the medical center.
- A second UC Irvine interdisciplinary team designed, tested, produced and delivered 5,000 greatly needed face masks for colleagues at the UC Irvine Medical Center. The entire initiative — from conception through delivery, took under two weeks. UCLA’s dentistry and engineering schools created a similar face mask prototype, which has been shared on the National Institutes of Health’s 3D Print Exchange for mass production. UC Santa Barbara is supplying printed masks to local hospitals, and UC San Diego’s Qualcomm Institute is using 3D printers to produce ventilator components, face shields and soon, perhaps, nasal swabs.
- UC Berkeley engineering researchers are addressing crucial ventilator shortages by repurposing sleep apnea machines. The UC Irvine Health campus is finalizing a novel “bridge ventilator”; once FDA-approved, it will be freely available to all manufacturers.
- UC San Diego Health is piloting an initiative to harness artificial intelligence to detect pneumonia.
- UCSF labs are offering free COVID-19 test analyses to public health departments in nine Bay Area counties.
Person-to-person relief
- At UC Davis Health, devoted lab scientists worked double shifts to screen transplant kidneys for COVID-19, and employees throughout campus gathered to donate their own blood to help make up for canceled drives throughout the community.
- Departments throughout the UC Davis campus donated thousands of high-demand items — including face masks, N95 respirators, gloves, aprons and coveralls — to protect their colleagues at UC Davis Health.
- At UC Berkeley, staff at the Basic Needs Center launched “food pop-ups” to serve a growing number of campus community members in need, while their peers at the UC Riverside Economic Crisis Response Team took an all-hands-on-deck approach to assist students in need of food and shelter.
- Nearly 300 supporters have contributed to UC Santa Cruz’s COVID-19 Slug Support Campaign for students in need, and the UC Hastings community created a GoFundMe campaign to support the Law Café, which typically serves fresh, homemade meals on campus.
Educational continuity
- UC Berkeley’s graduate students in chemistry created nearly 2,500 multimedia PowerPoint presentations of chemistry experiments so that undergrads could complete their required lab courses online.
- Admissions staff at UC Davis and UC San Diego welcomed prospective freshman students to campus virtually through interactive online programming.
- UC San Diego’s alumni community took time to connect one-on-one with more than 500 undergraduate and graduate students seeking career advice.
Beyond campus
- UCLA’s Stop COVID-19 Together app and UCSF’s COVID-19 Citizen Science initiative are engaging members of the public to harness personal experience and technology in fighting the spread of the coronavirus.
- The California History-Social Science Project, headquartered at UC Davis, developed much-needed resources for working parents who have acquired second jobs as homeschool teachers.
- Creative art therapists at UC Davis Health offer a lighthearted respite for pediatric patients in the hospital — as well as the general public — from music classes to modeling clay and creating mandalas.
- Experts at UC Agriculture and Natural Resources pooled their resources to create a dedicated coronavirus and COVID-19 website with targeted informational resources to address the agricultural and farming communities that they serve.
- UCLA Law librarian Lynn McClelland created a comprehensive catalog of state and federal statutes, rules and orders related to COVID-19.
You can help: Donate PPE!
Our UC Health community is working hard to provide the best care to those who need it and to help uncover solutions to this global health crisis. You can join us in this effort by donating personal protective equipment (PPE) to UC. Many of our hospitals and medical centers are accepting donations of critical supplies for frontline care providers, including unused N95 respirators and surgical masks, disposable gloves, protective goggles and eye shields, and sanitizers such as disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer.
Find donation details for UC medical centers here*:
*UC Irvine is not currently accepting PPE donations.