CNMS Users:
ORNL instituted a new vaccination policy for users that was effective October 15, 2021.
Good news! With this new policy, CNMS will now allow onsite access to fully vaccinated and non-vaccinated users. Please coordinate your onsite research visit with the Technical Contact(s) for your project.
Vaccinated and non-vaccinated users must attest to their vaccination status when they check-in at the Visitor Center to pick up their badge:
- if fully vaccinated, users can immediately work onsite (we do not need your vaccination card)
- if unvaccinated, users must present a negative COVID test result for a COVID test taken within 72 hours at the Visitor Center - either a rapid test or PCR test from a legitimate test facility is required (no at-home test results will be accepted). The negative result must be in an email or a report received from the testing center. Unvaccinated users who work onsite for more than 7 days must be tested each week get their badge renewed and continue working. Subsequent COVID tests can be scheduled at the ORNL drive-through facility (ask your Technical Contact about this)
- if you are unwilling to state whether you are vaccinated or unvaccinated, you must follow the procedures above for unvaccinated users
- Masks are required when working indoors in all ORNL buildings, labs, cafeteria, etc. Masks can only be removed when working alone, when social distancing is in place, or when outdoors. This applies to all vaccinated and unvaccinated staff, visitors, and users.
We will also continue to schedule users via Remote User Sessions under special circumstances. Remote operations are easier for some user projects (characterization sessions, for example) compared to others (synthesis experiments), but our goal is to continue to accommodate as many users as we possibly can. Remote operations are performed with a CNMS staff member via some type of video conferencing or web-based link directly to the instrument. While we do not expect our users to remotely operate instruments on their own, we do expect users to participate directly in the user sessions/experiments in real-time, which is why we are asking users to schedule remote sessions directly with a CNMS staff member (similar to how we would schedule a user to come onsite and perform work).
CNMS users are extremely important - our staff will do whatever we can to work with you!
Thank you.
Karren More
Director, Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences