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Eight labs honored for their outstanding safety cultures

By Public Affairs

Lane Martin, Arvind Dasgupta, Patrick Goff, Randy Katz
Professor Lane Martin and Arvind Dasgupta (both to the left) and the Prometheus Group, winners of Berkeley's Excellence in Laboratory Safety grand prize, with Environment, Health and Safety Director Patrick Goff and Vice Chancellor for Research Randy Katz (Photo by Armando Cortes)
Lane Martin, Arvind Dasgupta, Patrick Goff, Randy Katz

Professor Lane Martin and Arvind Dasgupta (both to the left) and the Prometheus Group, winners of Berkeley's Excellence in Laboratory Safety grand prize, with Environment, Health and Safety Director Patrick Goff and Vice Chancellor for Research Randy Katz (Photo by Armando Cortes)

UC Berkeley’s grand prize for lab safety has been awarded to Dr. Lane Martin, an associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, plus lab safety coordinators Arvind Dasgupta and Margaret McCarter and their research colleagues in the Prometheus Group.

Professor Martin’s Prometheus Group works on functional complex-oxide thin-film materials such as heterostructures and nanostructures. These materials are candidates for applications including logic, memory, sensing and energy conversion/transduction ( e.g., heat, stress, light to electricity), among others.

Seven other labs also won Excellence in Laboratory Safety Awards, conferred by the Office of Environment, Health and Safety. The awards, in their third year, recognize labs that demonstrate outstanding safety cultures.

Vice Chancellor for Research Randy Katz delivered the awards at a ceremony earlier this month.

The trophy was passed on from the 2016 grand prize winning David Schaffer lab.

The award program was developed by EH&S in 2015. Every year, it distinguishes small and large labs in four categories — chemical sciences, life sciences, field sciences and physical sciences — for their commitment to safety. The labs are evaluated based on the variety of hazards they are confronted with, the findings from EH&S lab inspections, the strength of safety leadership by the principal investigator, and the follow-up and communications of the lab safety coordinator. From among the labs that win within these categories, a grand prize winner is selected and awarded the Excellence in Laboratory Safety trophy.

Read more about the lab safety awards