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.

The event will run from 8:30 a.m. to noon in Room 271 at the Franklin Building. Featured speakers include: André Le Duc, UO’s chief resilience officer; Steve Stuckmeyer, director of UO environmental health and safety; Zoltan Varga, director of ZIRC; Astra Henner, manager of the Stankunas lab; Simon Ditton, UO fire protection Manager; Merrill Harrison, deputy fire marshal at Eugene-Springfield Fire; and Amanda Hatch, Enterprise Risk Management project manager.

More details are available on the event webpage. Registration for individual sessions is available now in MyTrack.

Preregistration is appreciated to help with event catering. A light breakfast will be provided.