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Hot weather is no longer an occasional British novelty. Labs overheat, freezers and imaging equipment fail, animal facilities need extra management, participants cancel appointments, and writing anything sensible in a stuffy office becomes a struggle. Most people in research have a heatwave story, and we have covered plenty of ground on what rising temperatures mean for people living with dementia, from the climate crisis & brain health to how climate change affects brain health and the evidence on global warming and the human brain. What the sector does not have is data on what hot weather does to the research itself.
Simonas Griesius, a postdoctoral researcher at UCL working mainly in wet-lab neuroscience, is running a survey to fill that gap. Feeling the Heat: impact of hot weather on research activities in the United Kingdom is open now and takes about 8 to 15 minutes to complete.
What the survey covers
Four areas in particular:
- Human participant issues
- Equipment failures, the sort that turn into experiments that went wrong
- Staff productivity, and the boundaries, wellbeing and work-life balance that go with it
- Animal welfare, which matters given how much preclinical work depends on animal models in dementia research
Who should take part
Anyone working in UK research, at any career stage, at any UK research institution, in any subject. PhD students, technicians, research nurses, postdoctoral researchers, group leaders, facility managers and professional services staff are all welcome. Responses from dementia and neurodegeneration researchers would be particularly useful, given how much of the work relies on animal facilities, cold chain storage, imaging suites and in-person visits from participants and their carers.
It is a fully anonymous survey.
Why it matters
Nobody has a clear picture of how much hot weather affects research across UK research institutions, which makes it hard to plan, budget, or build sensible contingency into protocols. Better data gives people something to point at when asking for air conditioning, backup cooling, or flexible working during a heatwave.
Take part
The survey runs until at least late September 2026, so there is time to complete it after the summer break. Please pass it on to colleagues, technicians and students in your department. The more responses, the better the picture of how hot weather affects research across the UK.
Harriet Greene
National Centre for Research Methods
Dr Becky Carlyle
Dr Lindsey Sinclair
Dr Yvonne Couch