Emergency shelter-in-place orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic have closed laboratories and disrupted research projects all over the world, leaving scientists scrambling to protect their work and prepare to resurrect it. Discussing the problem, electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Randy Katz, vice chancellor for research, says that a break of a few weeks isn't likely to cause irreparable damage, but the losses will be hard to avoid if the rules are in place for months." Animals don't live forever," he says, noting that one example is the necessity of testing mice bred to have a particular genetic condition or disease at a certain age, which gives researchers limited time frames for their work. Another example is disrupted work by Berkeley scientists to measure snowpack at field stations in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. That data guides state officials who decide how much water will be available for consumption or crop irrigation. "We obviously need to go when there is snow," he says. "If we wait too long, the opportunity is lost." Also weighing in on the disruptions, astronomy professor Alex Filippenko says he thought he was safe when he got special permission to take a last look at supernovas and other celestial objects related to their study of the current rate of expansion in the universe from a remote observing room on campus connected to the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii's Mauna Kea, but then he heard that first night that the telescope was being shut down. He scrambled to make other plans, but by the time he'll be able to look again, he says, those phenomena will have vanished.