Dispatches From IEEE Members Around the World

IEEE members, how has your life changed because of the coronavirus? Share stories and anecdotes about your personal or professional situation with other members. Let them know about the adaptations you and your colleagues have made, unusual experiences you've had, and how you are coping with the new rules of social interaction. Send your dispatches to The Institute's editor in chief Kathy Pretz, at k.pretz@ieee.org, for possible inclusion here.

Waiting Out the Pandemic in Qatar

Qusi Alqarqaz
IEEE Senior Member and a member of The Institute's Editorial Advisory Board
Dispatch Received: 12 May

Photo: Qusi Algarqaz Qusi Alqarqaz looks out his apartment window in Doha, Qatar.

Last August, I moved from San Antonio, Texas, to Doha, Qatar, to work as a manager for an environmental company. I was working 15 hours a day, seven days a week and too busy to watch the news. That was until early March when someone mentioned a virus from China called corona that was spreading all over the world.

That same night, I decided to research it on the Internet and was shocked about what I found. All I could think about were other horrible viruses like Ebola, HIV, influenza, and SARS-CoV. But in 2002, SARS infected only 8,000 people, ultimately killing 770 people over the course of two years. By that time, the coronavirus had already killed thousands in just a few weeks.

Over the next few days, I researched the novel coronavirus. I suspected it was going to take governments a long time to combat it. I knew from the history of vaccines that one would not be ready anytime soon, and many steps would have to be taken to win the war against this virus.

I knew this virus would touch us all. My wife, who still lives in Texas, told me there was no food on the shelves and that she often had to return three or four times to buy what she needed. I even considered sending food to my family from Qatar. My oldest daughter has suffered from ulcerative colitis since she was 17. Because of this disease, her immune system is weak, and she will be serious danger if she ends up getting the virus.

My friend, Frank, and his family moved from Texas to Italy last year. He lost his father and one of his best friends during the pandemic in that country. It was so sad hearing about his losses.

I was worried not only about my family in Texas, but also about the health of my workers. We employ 25 workers who come from India, Nepal, and Pakistan.

In this part of the world, some companies started to take serious measures to stay open, while others decided to shut down. My employer decided to stay open so I had no choice except to protect myself and my employees against the virus. I knew this would be hard, but I decided to keep going.

To give you an idea of the workforce structure here and in many developing countries, the economy is increasingly reliant on a global workforce mobilized to build infrastructure, underground railways, and large hotel complexes. Workers come mainly from Southeast Asia and East Africa and have played a significant role in construction projects in the Arabian Gulf countries.

These workers receive very low wages-they earn as little as US $300 a month. They live in crowded houses, sleep on bunks beds, and share rooms with up to six other workers. They travel to work on packed buses. They can't afford to get sick and miss work because they will find themselves trapped in the country, unemployed with no means to return home.

When I first joined the company and learned about the workers' living conditions, I made serious changes and implemented measures to improve their housing, which was provided by the company and adjacent to the factory. I had the beds separated and moved some into other rooms. I limited the number of people sharing a room to two to three.

A few months later we purchased five new portable buildings with larger rooms, which sat empty until the pandemic. To protect the workers against COVID-19 I offered them these new larger rooms. They were so happy, and immediately moved in. Only two people were allowed to share a room.

I also began educating them and everyone at the company about how the virus can spread and how to avoid it. Stronger cleaning measures were enacted at the factory and in offices and bedrooms. We made wearing masks and gloves mandatory for our employees and customers.

A few days after introducing these safety measures I had to deal with some bad news. Suffering financial problems brought on by the pandemic, my company reduced the workforce. Eventually I was also let go.

In the beginning I was not sure what to do: move back to the United States or look for another job? But I realized the employment situation was going to be the same everywhere. I told myself that since I had been working so hard for the last eight months, I should take a break. This made me feel much better so I decided to stay in Qatar. I returned to habits I enjoy, which includes writing and posting to social media. I even updated my resume. Even though I am physically isolated from my family and friends, I did not want to be emotionally isolated, so I chat and FaceTime with them every day.

It has been two months now. I see so much suffering around me caused by two crises: deaths from COVID-19 and high unemployment.

But I believe this is not going to continue for a long time. Are we are going to win this war on the pandemic? Indeed, we will.

I know this crisis will end. But I wonder if we are doing enough to make it end as soon as possible.

Stranded Far From Home, But Closer To Her Students Than Ever Before

Bozenna Pasik-Duncan
IEEE Fellow
Dispatch Received: 27 March

Photo: Dominique Duncan Bozenna Pasik-Duncan, a professor at the University of Kansas, teaches one of her classes remotely from her daughter's California home.

I'm a professor of mathematics at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. I'm also a courtesy professor of electrical engineering and computer science and aerospace engineering there. And I'm a proud IEEE Life Fellow.

My university's spring break began on 6 March with a trip from my home in Lawrence, Kan., to New Orleans for an in-person-meeting of the IEEE Women in Engineering Committee of which I'm a member and also was its 2017-2018 global chair. The weekend meeting was fantastic. I returned to Kansas on Sunday night, 8 March, ready to enjoy the remaining few days of the break by taking a trip with my husband to visit our daughter, Dominique and her pug Bruno, in Santa Monica, Calif., as well as attend a workshop at UCLA.

The first coronavirus warnings had caused many of my university colleagues to stay in Kansas while on break, but I was so excited about attending the High Dimensional Hamilton - Jacobi Partial Differential Equations workshop held from 10 to 13 March at UCLA's Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics. Also, my husband, who grew up in the city, loves going back to Santa Monica and visiting UCLA.

Universities in Los Angeles were already beginning to close when we arrived.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed taking long walks with Bruno. I also looked forward to having a cup of coffee every morning and ordering scrambled eggs for Bruno at our favorite neighborhood coffee shop and being waited on by its friendly staff. On Saturday morning, 14 March, the shop was closed, and on its door was a note that one of the employees had COVID-19.

My husband and I were scheduled to fly back home on Monday, 16 March, but getting on an airplane was already considered risky by that time. I became tremendously concerned that I might have been exposed to the novel coronavirus and decided to self-isolate and not fly back to Kansas. My husband, also a professor in my department at the University of Kansas, was determined to return home because the semester was scheduled to start that Monday, but I was torn because I didn't want to be separated from him.

I'm also an investigator in the Dynamics and Control Program at the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Also that Monday, the program officer wrote a note to all the investigators in his program that said: All, if you could please tell me the impact of the virus on your research and on your teaching, I would really appreciate it. I believe we need this information for the Air Force."

I shared with the program officer that my husband would be flying back to Kansas in a few hours but I could not fly, and I could not stop him from flying, so this became a serious situation. Two of our colleagues who do medical research responded with: Don't fly." Our daughter, an electrical engineer and an IEEE senior member, works at the University of Southern California Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute at the university's Keck School of Medicine. Her colleagues recommended, No flying for your parents." My husband finally canceled the flight.

On 17 March, the university announced that all instruction would be online for the remainder of the spring semester and that instructors are now required to teach classes remotely. On top of this, on 19 March, California's governor issued a statewide shelter-in-place order.

Unfortunately, I didn't bring any textbooks or lecture notes with me. With only an iPhone and an old laptop, I began teaching probability and statistics to 40 engineering students using Zoom video conferencing. This new real-life problem created the best motivation for analyzing data, modeling data, estimating, and testing our research hypotheses. We didn't need textbooks or my lecture notes. My favorite five C's: curiosity, creativity, connections, communication, and collaboration became powerful, beautiful, and exciting tools in learning probability and statistics while dealing with this unknown phenomenon.

This situation can serve as the best motivation and inspiration for students to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as well as data science. I have no doubt that this will be the most successful and most memorable course I have taught during my almost 50-year scientific career. This new passion of creating approaches to teaching and learning in a very scary and dangerous environment allows my students and me to overcome fear and tremendous difficulties.

This new situation also brought memories of the stories my mother and grandmother shared of how they survived two World Wars in Poland. My mother's husband was one of the first people killed in a concentration camp. My mother, my 8-year-old sister (who later died as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear accident), and my grandmother survived. I grew up in Radom, 60 miles from Warsaw, and heard stories from my teachers about their best strategies for teaching while fighting for their lives.

When my students, who are seniors and ready for graduation, told me that they feel depressed that they won't have a traditional university graduation at the scheduled date, I shared my story of having my wedding in New York City without my mother or any member of my family in attendance because they were unable to get a visa to travel to the United States. In those days, there was no option for remote interaction.

I shared with them my mother's words of wisdom: Always try to turn something negative into a positive. I always credit my students with making me happy that I live in this country, but I needed to hear in these special and scary circumstances: We love you, professor."

Although physically scared, spiritually I feel like the happiest person on Earth. I feel blessed to be with my daughter, and having amazing food prepared by extraordinary Italian cooks who deliver it. I cannot stop thinking of my family and friends in Poland, and thousands of my IEEE friends from all over the world in countries affected by this pandemic. I hope that, like my mother and grandmother, I will survive, and I hope that this COVID-19 nightmare will be over soon.