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This message has been distributed to all UT employees with Principal Investigator (PI) status, as well as all UT graduate students and postdocs.
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Dear PI Colleagues,
We’re getting closer to the start of the fall semester, and I want to send a few important updates your way. This will be most relevant to those of you working or conducting research on campus.
Proactive Community Testing
In my email on July 15, I mentioned that the Center for Biomedical Research Support (CBRS) was working to bring additional testing capacity online this month so that proactive community testing could resume in August. I’m glad to report we’re on target to meet this goal. In partnership with UHS, CBRS now has begun piloting a new on-campus COVID-19 testing lab that will eventually be able to analyze more than 1,000 saliva-based tests in an 8-hour shift. In initial trials over the last two weeks, more than 400 tests have been processed with turnaround times of less than 24 hours. You’ll receive more information about volunteering for proactive community testing in the coming weeks.
Many, many thanks to the researchers, staff, and volunteers who’ve spent countless hours working to make this on-campus testing lab a reality. The university’s ability to proactively test on-campus students, faculty, and staff — and turn results around in hours instead of days without relying on an outside vendor — is something to be tremendously proud of.
Protect Texas Together App
Earlier this summer, UT entered the beta testing phase of the Protect Texas Together app, which Interim President Jay Hartzell described in his email on Wednesday. UT students, staff, and researchers from diagnostic medicine, electrical and computer engineering, computational engineering, computer science, and the Office of the Vice President for Research designed the app, which allows for daily symptom self-monitoring, participating in on-campus proactive community testing, and digital room sign-ins for efficient contact tracing. Users who complete a daily symptom survey with no major COVID-19 symptoms will be granted a “campus access pass” that they can display to colleagues or supervisors.
The app team also prioritized personal privacy. Personal information, such as symptom logs, is maintained on individual users’ phones. These data are not shared or stored in a central location, and users can delete data or uninstall the app at any time. Some information, such as location logs, is stored centrally to aid in university-wide contact tracing efforts.
The full version of the app will be available in mid-August, but you are all welcome to sign up for the beta version now. Please note that use of the app is purely voluntary, but I invite you to help us test the app now before its official debut next month.
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Mask Noncompliance
Also in Interim President Hartzell’s message this week was a reminder about wearing masks while inside university buildings (with a few noted exceptions). He specified that those who put the community at risk by refusing to wear a mask would face corrective, disciplinary and enforcement action in accordance with the university’s guidelines for faculty, staff, and students. If you witness a student (graduate or undergraduate) refusing to comply with masking guidelines, you may report them anonymously through Student Conduct and Academic Integrity. Guidance about how to anonymously report staff or faculty noncompliance will be released soon as well.
I hope everyone will take these policies to heart and follow them consistently. Doing so is essential for staying healthy and for being able to maintain our current Research Level 3 workforce density. As always, please do not hesitate to contact your associate dean for research if you have any questions, concerns, or issues.
Sincerely,
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Alison R. Preston, Ph.D.
Interim Vice President for Research
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