Rick Coulon, UCI's associate vice chancellor for operations, has been putting a lot of thought and planning into the upcoming resumption of closer-to-full-scale activities on campus following the months' long curtailment to prevent the spread of coronavirus. He discusses the steps he and his colleagues are taking to prepare in this episode of Anteater Insider.

Technology has played a crucial role in UCI’s ability to shift to remote work, instruction and even patient care. As UCI starts to reengage operations, the campus has an opportunity to develop a new normal around technology. Tom Andriola is vice chancellor of information technology and data at UCI and he tells the Anteater Insider about the rapid transition to off-campus operations, the sheer scale of the change and how UCI can reimagine technology.

Interim provost and executive vice chancellor Hal Stern is leading UCI’s plan to re-engage with campus operations after a state-wide, stay-at-home order was issued in March in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Anteater Insider podcast, he describes this methodical re-engagement approach, which started last week with the resumption of some research functions. It and it will continue over the summer to allow for essential employees to resume to on-campus work activities. By fall, the plan is to have the campus bustling with activity once again – this time with the expectations of frequent handwashing, the wearing of facial coverings and physical distancing. Welcome to the new normal.

UCI is reengaging operations and more people are getting ready to come back to campus, with university leaders generating plans and implementing measures to ensure a smooth, safe transition. Bernadette Boden-Albala, the director and founding dean of UCI’s Program in Public Health, talks with the Anteater Insider about those plans, where Orange County stands on COVID-19, and why it’s safe to return to campus.

Pramod Khargonekar, UCI's vice chancellor for research, is the first guest on Anteater Insider, a new podcast series from UCI's office of Strategic Communications & Public Affairs. The vice chancellor discusses the plans and procedures UCI has put in place to enable increasing numbers of researchers to come back to campus, when necessary, to do their work.

In this episode of the UCI Podcast, Alison Holman, an associate professor at UCI’s Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing, speaks with UCI's Aaron Orlowski about the different ways the coronavirus pandemic has affected our ability to keep track of time. An expert in trauma, Holman says the COVID-19 crisis has stripped us of our expected futures, unmooring us.

In this special edition of the UCI Podcast, infectious disease experts Drs. Ming Tan and Saahir Khan of the UCI School of Medicine examine the past, present and future of global pandemics, and where we stand as the global community works to solve the coronavirus riddle and the deadly COVID-19 disease it causes.

In March, the UCI Medical Center became the first hospital in Orange County to provide COVID-19 testing. Dr. Ed Monuki, chair of pathology who leads UCI Health’s testing efforts, discusses how the campus came together to address this community need and how future testing for the coronavirus and its antibodies will play an important role with the resumption of our regular daily activities, like going back to work or the classroom.

If you were to point on a U.S. map where COVID-19 has hit the hardest, it would be New York City. And that’s where Dr. Robert Rowe, a critical care fellow and attending physician in emergency medicine with UCI Health, volunteered in the intensive care unit at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens. The Elmhurst neighborhood has been called the “epicenter of the epicenter” of coronavirus infections in the United States. Dr. Rowe joins the UCI Podcast to discuss working 12-hour shifts for a week straight seeing severely ill COVID-19 patients, many of whom died. While COVID-19 cases are proportionately lower in Orange County than in other areas of the U.S., he warns its residents to continue to practice social distancing and other safe behaviors to stem the spread of the disease.

Jesse Borelli is an associate professor of psychological science at UCI, and she studies the links between close relationships, emotions, health and development, with a particular focus on risk for anxiety and depression. In this special UCI Podcast, she discusses how to stay safe and sane during social distancing.