NARRAGANSETT, R.I. – May 5, 2020 – As soon as Roxanne Beinart joined the faculty at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography in 2017, she began planning an ambitious research trip that would take her on a 37-day expedition to the waters around the South Pacific nation of Tonga.

That trip was supposed to depart from Fiji on April 3 to study the ecology of the animals and microbes that live in hydrothermal vents on the seafloor. It was to be her first major research cruise as a URI faculty member and her first experience as chief scientist.

But it was canceled – as were all research expeditions aboard any U.S. research ship – due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“At first we had a conversation about logistics and whether there would be travel restrictions and if the people we needed were going to be able to get to Fiji,” said Beinart, a microbial ecologist and assistant professor of oceanography. “And then it became clear that things were changing so rapidly that all of the research cruises were going to be paused. I was thinking about the pandemic for weeks and was anticipating that this might happen, so I was mentally prepared for the disruption.”

Unfortunately, she had shipped four pallets of equipment and supplies to Fiji ahead of her trip, and there is no timetable for when it might be returned to Rhode Island. In addition to the pandemic, Fiji is also dealing with the aftereffects of a cyclone that struck the country on April 8.

“That’s my one major regret, that I shipped it all just a few days before the cruise was canceled,” Beinart said.

Rescheduling the expedition will take a year or two, which will slow her research considerably at a crucial time in her career when demonstrating research progress is especially important.

“I’ve worked in that region before and I have samples I can still analyze from previous cruises, but my collaborators are larval ecologists and were going to be collecting samples that nobody has ever collected before, so I’m not sure what they’re going to do,” said Beinart. “This disruption will slow my ability to do this particular project, but I won’t be at a total standstill.”

With unexpected free time in her schedule, Beinart shifted her focus from her canceled research expedition to Rhode Island’s need for medical supplies and personal protective equipment and how URI might help fight the pandemic. She donated swabs and other supplies from her lab to the cause, then solicited faculty throughout the University for similar donations.

She also surveyed URI faculty and graduate students working in molecular biology research laboratories to see if anyone would be interested in volunteering to help with COVID-19 testing, if the state needed additional personnel trained in relevant techniques.

“I knew that we had plenty of people with the right expertise, and I had seen in the news of other university efforts to volunteer their time and talents, so I figured we could do that here, too,” she said. “Besides, I had already adjusted my schedule so I wasn’t teaching this semester, so I had a little more bandwidth available to think about this kind of thing.”

Beinart is one of dozens of URI faculty and staff who have joined together to support the state’s effort to fight the COVID-19 virus in a variety of ways. But she’s the only one trading a trip to Fiji to do so.