Open platform enables student researchers to become certified in lab safety while creating a community to share best practices
HANOVER, NH and CAMBRIDGE, MA— July 24, 2012 —NH-INBRE, Dartmouth College Environmental Health & Safety, and BioRAFT announce the launch of LabSafetyWorkspace.org. The team established this online laboratory safety training program to provide student scientists and faculty with the knowledge they need to work safely in a lab setting. While launched for New Hampshire-based undergraduate colleges and universities, LabSafetyWorkspace.org is open to researchers worldwide to take introductory safety training courses. The community is also open to course-content contributors with the goal of building a collective knowledgebase on best practices for laboratory safety.
LabSafetyWorkspace.org was funded as part of a $15.4-million award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support biomedical research by faculty and students throughout New Hampshire. Received in 2010, the award funded the formation of the New Hampshire IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (NH-INBRE), a collaborative network of 10 two- and four-year colleges within the state.
The formation of NH-INBRE enabled New Hampshire schools to secure federal grants to expand their research programs, which will vastly increase the time that students and faculty spend in laboratory settings. “Prior to securing these grants, many of these schools were able to teach science at the classroom level, but now they can bring students into the laboratory to conduct research,” says Chuck Wise, Coordinator, NH-INBRE. “That has created an opportunity, but it also has created a liability – many faculty and students have not had recent exposure to lab safety training.”
Principal investigators at Dartmouth Medical School, one of the lead institutions for NH-INBRE, recognized this expansion as an opportunity to create standardized curricula for laboratory safety and worked with Dr. Michael Blayney, Director of Environmental Health & Safety at Dartmouth College, to accomplish this goal.
“Safety training may or may not be mandatory at different institutions, so it’s hard to gauge what students know coming into a lab. We wanted to create a way for not only New Hampshire students and faculty, but for anyone in the world to get access to best practices for basic lab safety training,” says Blayney. “LabSafetyWorkspace.org creates a transferrable training record that can be validated by any institution, and levels the field by providing competency-based training.”
Dartmouth EHS created programs that outline standards and best practices for laboratory safety as the foundation for developing NH-INBRE’s online training courses, enabling researchers to learn sound safety techniques while reducing the need for individual institutions to develop fundamental training offerings. NH-INBRE then turned to BioRAFT, provider of the BioRAFT suite of laboratory safety and compliance management solutions, to provide an online portal for seamless content delivery and administration.
“We launched a web-based portal that ensures open, streamlined access to lab safety content for training purposes, as well as for contributing new course material,” says Nathan Watson, President and CEO, BioRAFT. “We’re impressed with the leadership that the NH-INBRE collaborative has shown in promoting laboratory safety for the research community and are honored to help them make their high-quality training content available to researchers worldwide.”
Researchers can take courses at LabSafetyWorkspace.org for free, and receive printable certificates upon course-completion. Schools that participate in LabSafetyWorkspace.org agree to recognize certificates as evidence that the student demonstrates fundamental knowledge of lab safety best practices, and can use the site’s validation mechanism to confirm a certificate’s authenticity.
The next step for LabSafetyWorkspace.org is to develop a common body of knowledge on laboratory safety. Based on approval, any academic or commercial entity may place its lab safety content online for the research community to access. “Lab safety shouldn’t be proprietary – it should be open,” says Blayney. “We created LabSafetyWorkspace.org as an open-source concept with the hope of furthering safe working practices.”
To learn more about LabSafetyWorkspace.org, or to take the free laboratory safety training courses, visit http://labsafetyworkspace.org/
About NH-INBRE
The New Hampshire IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (NH-INBRE) is a collaborative network of two- and four-year colleges in the State of New Hampshire. NH-INBRE partners include Colby Sawyer College, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Franklin Pierce University, Great Bay Community College, Keene State College, New England College, Plymouth State University, River Valley Community College, Saint Anselm’s College, and University of New Hampshire. For more information, visit http://nhinbre.org/
About Dartmouth College Environmental Health & Safety
The Office of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) provides advice and guidance to the Dartmouth Community on occupational and environmental health and safety issues. EHS manages the College's Hazardous Waste Management, Minimization and Disposal Program. For more information, visit http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ehs/
About BioRAFT
The BioRAFT suite of research management software modules significantly improves laboratory safety, compliance processes, researcher productivity, and management oversight. BioRAFT enables researchers to focus on their research by managing compliance for training, biosafety, hazardous chemicals, radiation management, MSDS, and other laboratory safety requirements. BioRAFT has recently secured an investment from Digital Science, a new technology company out of Macmillan Publishers Ltd. For more information, visit http://www.BioRAFT.com
Media contacts
For BioRAFT
Alison Harris
Harris Media Services
+1 207.829.4500
[email protected]
For Dartmouth College
Michael B. Blayney, Ph.D
Dartmouth College
+1 603 646 1762
[email protected]
For NH-INBRE
Chuck Wise, NH-INBRE manager
Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth
+1 603.359.0548
[email protected]