Excellence In Laboratory Safety Awards

Overview

This award celebrates labs with exemplary safety records, proactive and consistent communication, and constructive engagement with lab members on safety practices. Check out the 2025 winners and see which labs are leading the way in ensuring a safe research environment!

Congratulations to the 2025 Grand Prize winners, the Combes Lab!

A picture showing the members of the winning Coombes lab.

About the Program

The Excellence in Laboratory Safety Awards program recognizes labs that demonstrate exemplary safety performance. The aim acknowledging and rewarding laboratories that maintain outstanding safety practices and actively promote a culture of lab safety. The awards are presented annually in March.

Awards Nomination and Selection Process

Nominations:
- Can be submitted by neighboring labs, the labs themselves, or the DSA.
- Must be for a campus research laboratory that has been inspected by the EH&S Campus Safety Program for at least one year.
Disqualification Criteria:
- Inspection deficiencies within the past year.
- Labs without employees (PI only).
- Labs at UCSF for less than a year.
- Repeated injuries or exposures.
Evaluation:
- The award committee will conduct coordinated visits to the labs.
- Ratings are based on a swift general inspection and an assessment of safety culture promotion methods employed by the Principal Investigator (PI) and the lab manager.

Prizes

All Winning Groups:
- An Award ceremony for Principal Investigators and Lab members.
- Award certificates for the Principal Investigator and Lab Manager, signed by the Vice Chancellor of Research and Assistant Vice Chancellor of EH&S.
- A $25 gift card for each research group member.
- A $50 gift card for PI and lab manager.
Grand Prize:
- One of the six winning labs will be selected for outstanding performance.
- The Grand Prize winner receives a perpetual trophy.
  - The trophy will be engraved annually with the name of the Grand Prize-winning lab.
  - The trophy will stay with the winning lab for the year, and then it will be awarded to the next year’s winner.
  - A $50 gift card for the lab manager.