Summit on laboratory safety coming to UO on March 4

UO Safety and Risk Services will host its second annual summit on laboratory safety on March 4.

The half-day event is aimed at university faculty members, staff and students who manage labs and who work as principal investigators. Its goal is to teach best practices for preparing for and preventing major incidents such as lab fires or equipment failures.

This year’s summit theme is “Emergency Planning for Research Continuity.” It will take a look at lessons learned from a catastrophic freezer failure in the UO’s Stankunas lab in 2019 and from a 2014 fire started in UO’s ZIRC quarantine room. Both incidents had lasting effects on some research efforts at the university.

Speakers will discuss preventive measures that labs can take to minimize risks, as well as researchers’ ongoing recovery efforts. The summit also will feature a Q&A session with the UO fire marshal group and the Eugene-Springfield Fire Department and a keynote address from André Le Duc, UO’s chief resilience officer.