Dear my fellow researchers:

As you may already know, the 2019 novel Coronavirus outbreak has affected many people in China. So far, as the date of February 4th, the confirmed cases in China alone is 24,552 people, with 490 people dead due to the infection. Wuhan city, with population of 11.08 million, has taken emergent action to control the epidemic, including shutting down the public transit, delaying Lunar year holidays and restricting people from exiting/entering the city. The World Health Organization has declared it as a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern". However, we still don't have a definitive treatment yet. Grown up from the SARS outbreak period, I still remember the same the panics and chaos. 

What's worse, within the next few month, there are many major conferences having paper submission deadlines. Due to the virus, many of my fellow researchers in China have to stay at home. And many of my colleague and labmates who are studying in the U.S. cannot come back to their schools to continue their research work due to the recent travel ban issued by the government. I truly feel their struggles to fight both the virus and the deadlines. I will feel sorry if their ground-breaking research results cannot appear in the conferences due to delay they have no control of. It will be a pity both to those researchers, and to the research community as a whole. 

Thus, as a Ph.D student studying at Johns Hopkins University, I want to start this petition and forward it to all major conferences to delay the deadlines. I believe any actions to support those people who are affected by this disaster will be truly invaluable.

Thank you for your time!

Best,

Zhaoshuo Li