During the COVID pandemic, U21 funded many collaborative projects through a one-off Researcher Resiliency Fund.

As one ECR researcher noted,

U21 support was instrumental in building digital capacity within the U21 network to minimize barriers to career enhancement in times of unforeseen rapid social, economic, environmental, and political changes through culturally sensitive evidence-based mentorship and professional development opportunities emphasizing diversity and inclusivity

Outcomes from the projects included enhanced skills across ECR participants in working in a digital environment, such as podcasting and creating and running online workshops as well as developing collaborative online networks and communities of practice, with many continuing and strengthening to the present day.

Sample project outcomes from the Researcher Resiliency Fund

1. Reimagining academic horizons: Stories we tell: The University of Melbourne, National University of Singapore, The University of Hong Kong: A project website hosts a series of podcasts and links to journal articles about the resilient academic during and post COVID.
2. Remote Collaborative Translation: Modern Chinese Social and Political Thought: This project was established through U21 funding and is still ongoing. It was designed to assist translators and students by providing a searchable bilingual corpus through which one can see how others have translated texts useful for anyone engaging in Chinese-English translation or Chinese intellectual history..

• Building Online Workshops: Developing resilience and digital skills through project-based learning: For this project PhD students form McMaster University, University of Auckland and University of New South Wales collaborated to build an online interactive workshop based on their research in the field of astrobiology (the origin of life on Earth and the study of potential life on other planets).

• Towards better informed, more inclusive autism research: Building the U21 Autism Research Network: The U21 team comprises autism researchers from around the world, dedicated to making research more inclusive of the autism community and ensuring we strive for research that represents the full diversity of this community.
  • Recent publications include: Autism-related language preferences of English-speaking individuals across the globe: A mixed methods investigation“,
• Thriving in a Post COVID age: An International Collaboration And Career Development Tool to Increase Diversity and Inclusion in Healthcare Management, Health Services, and Health Policy Research: University of Birmingham & University of Maryland

With the Support of U21, we developed a virtual translational science research platform “Health Research Exchange (HREx)” to support the U21 network’s Doctoral students and Early Career Researchers (ECR’s) in the Health Services Research, Health Policy, Healthcare Management and related fields and address health systems needs.  We accomplished our goal by assessing current research and career development strategies and opportunities available or lack thereof via surveys to inform development of HREx.  The HREx continues to be a thriving ongoing Community of Practice within U21.