PhD students: A year of great promise, anxiety, lost opportunities

Jeanne Pauline Munganyinka had just sat down to draft her research paper at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in the US on March 10, when a friend from back home in Rwanda called to ask if she was all right. The Trump administration had declared a public health emergency in the US almost a month earlier, but the coronavirus pandemic had continued to surge, and her friend was worried about her.

Munganyinka told her all was well. But, in reality, all was not well – actually, nothing was well.

The state of Massachusetts had imposed a strict lockdown to avert cases of the coronavirus and the institute at Worcester planned to shut its laboratories.

Munganyinka was worried about whether she would be able to continue with her PhD research in mineral processing. She was worried about her husband, who was studying for his PhD in Wuhan, China – the epicentre of the pandemic. She was anxious about her three-year-old daughter with whom she had travelled to the US.

“I felt disturbed since the outbreak of the pandemic,” said Munganyinka, who is in the US as part of the PASET Regional Scholarship and Innovation Fund (RSIF) programme run by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Kenya (ICIPE). “I didn’t know what I was going to do – whether I would continue with my research or see my husband again,” she said.

“The pandemic was not only halting my academic activities,” she continued. “It was also testing my mental strength, and at one time I felt I wanted to give up [on my studies]. I was frightened by the constant COVID-19 news and the death toll that was rising every hour. I couldn’t concentrate on anything.”

However, she soldiered on, doing the research for her work inside her apartment via the internet, and taking good care of her daughter. She is still in the US and has not seen her husband up to today.

Emotional turmoil

Munganyinka is not the only PhD scholar who has ‘bad’ reflections for the year 2020.

Emmanuel Effah, who is also studying for his PhD at the WPI, said he had to suspend his core research activities or lab works from 15 March to 26 October 2020 after local authorities placed the polytechnic institute under strict lockdown.

“WPI disallowed all lab work during this period, which grounded my intended research plans,” he said. “A very strict confinement protocol was imposed to restrict my movement just to my residence.

“To worsen matters, my apartment-mates decided to live indoors with their families, which made me to feel very lonely and anxious. I stayed indoors for several months without seeing human beings,” he said.

Effah, a PhD student in the department of computer science at the University Gaston Berger, Senegal, was scheduled to conduct his experiments at the Wireless Innovation Laboratory at WPI from 17 November 2019 to 17 October 2021. His research goal is to build a fault-tolerant, energy-efficient, and adaptive Agricultural Internet of Things (Agri-IoT) network to enhance ‘smart’ or precision farming, greenhouses in Sub-Saharan Africa.

He now fears he might have to stay longer in the US to complete his research.

“The imposed travel ban at WPI [which is in place] till today has affected vital research-related and personal travels,” said Effah. “For instance, I’m currently expected to be in Senegal to build and assess the performance of my proposed Agri-IoT system in a use-case field scenario.

“Even though I am running out of internship and funding durations, my activities are grounded due to the travel ban,” he continued. “Sometimes I feel so emotional about the fact that I cannot even travel to see my one-year-old son, who has not yet seen his father.”

A challenging time

Effah is also part of the RSIF programme which focuses on the establishment of high-quality PhD training, research and innovation environments in priority sectors, and to develop their institutional capacity for the benefit of the whole region.

RSIF has been funding 82 (15 in cohort I and 67 in cohort II) PhD scholars since its inception in 2015, and aims at training at least 15,000 doctoral-level scientists from Sub-Saharan Africa in STEM-related disciplines in the next 20 years. But the programme and its scholars have been affected by the coronavirus-induced lockdowns globally and had to adjust, said Sagal Abdulle, who coordinates the programme.

When COVID-19 was declared an international pandemic in March 2020, 12 of 15 cohort I scholars were doing their international sandwich (collaborative) programme in Korea and the US, while 67 RSIF cohort II scholars had just accepted their scholarships and were due to travel to the 11 RSIF African host universities to start their doctoral studies, said Abdulle.

In a sandwich programme, scholars have at least a session (usually ranging from nine to 18 months) to work on a particular project, internship or study abroad in between their academic session.

“The entire 12 cohort I students have had quite a challenging year in foreign countries,” Abdulle said. “All 11 African host universities were subsequently closed, and students were forced to engage from distance.”

Like other actors in the higher education sector, the programme had to respond to the rapidly evolving context of university closures, travel restrictions and lockdowns to give their scholars a chance.

“All 67 cohort II students were supported to register from a distance and have taken advantage of this time to work with supervisors to develop their research proposals,” said Abdulle. “Fortunately, universities staff were able to continue to engage with PhD students and they have focused the time to work with supervisors and other staff on theory, literature and writing.”

She said the student orientation training for the 67 RSIF cohort II students was successfully implemented online.

Adapting in a new country

But some scholars have struggled with access to laboratories and equipment, which is affecting their research.

Sylvia Maina registered for a PhD in biotechnology at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro, Tanzania. But she’s currently based at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) as a research trainee where she has been doing her research for two years since September 2019.

She said she has had to postpone a number of experiments because of the coronavirus-induced travel bans and lockdowns in South Korea, which has created “overlapping tasks” for her to accomplish her research within limited time.

Frejus Sodedji, a Beninese student in the RSIF programme enrolled at the University Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Ivory Coast, said the first cases of the coronavirus outbreak in South Korea were reported in January, only a week after he had arrived in the country as part of the sandwich programme offered by the joint collaboration between RSIF and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST).

“You can imagine my anxiety, being a new student in a foreign country,” said Sodedji.

Fortunately, the South Korean government responded quickly to calm the situation, implementing various measures to prevent the spread of the virus.

Noel Gahamanyi, who is also at KIST and is studying molecular epidemiology and antimicrobial resistance, said the scholars have to telecommute (work from home for 50% of the allocated hours), which means “reduced support from lab mates”.

Wisdom and determination

However, the scholars have found a way to work around the strict lockdowns and to continue with their research projects.

Effah said he decided to use his time in lockdown to conduct his simulation experiments remotely and to write papers. “I was able to produce two conference papers and presented them at the IEEE VTC2020 Fall, IEEE’s highest impact factor conference in Canada,” said Effah. “The papers will soon be published in IEEE Access.” The IEEE is a technical professional organisation for the advancement of technology.

He was also able to draft an in-depth tutorial paper on Agri-IoT and is currently reviewing it before he submits it to the journal IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

“The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that, indeed, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, and there are embedded opportunities to every chaotic problem which can be exploited using wisdom and determination,” he said.

Maina said that, while the pandemic has had its fare share of negative tales, she appreciates that it has taught her resilience and the need to sacrifice “my time to meet my objective”.

“This season has helped to improve knowledge in my field since I have diversified from just reading research papers to developing an appreciation for useful videos that actively demonstrate techniques I am interested in,” she said.

While Gahamanyi says 2020 has given him time to reflect on his priorities and what he should value most, Munganyinka cannot wait for the world to find a vaccine and control the virus so she can complete her research and be reunited with her husband.