First, we want to thank everyone in the research community for your flexibility and partnership in working through the changes of the last few days. We have quickly enacted substantial changes in our research program and campus access, which none of us would have forecasted just a few months ago.

One of the most important positive impacts that we can have institutionally is to limit the number of people visiting the campus in support of social distancing.

All of us have considered ways to change our work patterns along these lines, and a large proportion of us are now working remotely. In reviewing campus access logs, it is clear that we need to achieve additional decreases in the number of individuals on campus to achieve this goal and we appreciate your support in doing so.

We have worked to establish several processes to identify those who may need ongoing campus access for research-related matters. With the rapid roll-out of these initiatives, we do understand there have been questions which we aim to address here. Below are the different types of research access one may need and an explanation of how they are related.

• Critical access for research maintenance: Those who need access for research maintenance activities, such as critical cell culture maintenance and liquid nitrogen monitoring/maintenance, should be included in the COOP/critical access list. If this is the only type of access needed, no other approvals are needed. This is the list you completed with your DFA/Administration.​​​​
• Animal research: If you need access to complete current animal research, contact OLAR at OLAR.Admin@ucdenver.edu for review and approval. If there is a very minor amount of lab work directly related to the animal work, such as sample processing, additional approval through the Research Access link for ongoing benchwork (below) is not required
• Clinical research: Most of the clinical research activity on campus is on hold or deferred. If you do have active clinical research with a critical need to be physically present in CU Anschutz/CU Denver/CU Medicine facilities, please be sure to complete this application. Your submission will go through a review process, and you will be notified of the determination. Research activities taking place in affiliated hospitals, such as UCHealth and Children’s Hospital Colorado, are subject to the policies and procedures of that facility.
• New clinical research: If you have a new clinical research protocol needing review and approval, submit a copy of the draft protocol to ClinicalResearchSupportCenter@ucdenver.edu to ensure that it is feasible to be operationalized under current circumstances.
• Ongoing bench research: Ongoing bench research may be approved in very rare circumstances, for example, if the work focuses on COVID-19 with a potential for near-term impact. Those with an extraordinary request for ongoing bench/lab-based research, please use this form.

Note: All regulatory approval committees managed by the campus are still operational and available to assist you to work through any issues from a regulatory perspective. The regulatory offices are working remotely but still available to facilitate your research and advise on how to manage your active research.

We again appreciate everyone’s collective efforts to identify critical research activities and help us to reduce the number of individuals physically on campus. Working remotely is an important contribution that we can make to our state and national effort against COVID-19.