Stony Brook University Celebrates a Highly Successful Lab Safety Awareness Week

From February 9-13, 2026, Stony Brook University hosted a highly successful Lab Safety Awareness Week, an annual event dedicated to recognizing the achievements of our laboratory health and safety programs. The week-long campaign provided vital information and innovative ideas to help faculty, staff, and students maintain the highest standards of safety in their research and teaching environments.

This year's focal point was "Lab Housekeeping." To emphasize its importance, students, researchers and lab staff were encouraged to review the Safety Notice-Lab Housekeepingon the Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S) website and reflect on best practices to keep workspaces safe, organized, and efficient.

Throughout the week, the EH&S Lab Safety team took to the campus, visiting various laboratories to engage directly with the research community. These interactive visits allowed lab members to meet the EH&S team, share their top lab housekeeping tips for a chance to win the Best Suggestion Prize, and play a custom virtual game titled "Escape the Lab" to win exciting prizes.

A major highlight of the week was the announcement of the Lab Safety Raising Stars. Three research laboratories were recognized for their outstanding commitment to continuous growth in lab safety practices over the past year. Their daily efforts contribute significantly to a stronger culture of safety across the university. Each lab has received a certificate of excellence, and every member of the lab group has received a special prize from EH&S.

Congratulations to our 2026 Lab Safety Raising Stars:

• Benjamin Hsiao, Chemistry
• Oliver Shipley, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences
• Jonathan Nelson, Biochemistry and Cell Biology

The success of this year's event has been met with high praise from university leadership. "What an incredibly successful safety campaign that advances the safety culture in laboratories and aligns our programs with the key pillars of our University's shared strategic vision," noted leadership in a statement to the EH&S Research Safety team. "It helps accelerate our excellence in research by ensuring safe laboratory practices; build on laboratory successes to further promote safe science; and catalyze the commitment of our students, faculty, and staff to implement safe and caring behavior throughout the University."

The university extends its sincere thanks to the entire EH&S Research Safety team and the campus community for the daily actions taken to support a safe, efficient, and thriving research environment.