By Cindy Granier
Zhen Fu, a senior chemical safety specialist with Environmental Health & Life Safety, is one of three winners who submitted entries to a two-week Datathon, aimed at expanding the body of knowledge that will help the scientific community avoid repeating dangerous chemical reactions.
In 2017, the Pistoia Alliance, a global not-for-profit alliance of life science companies, vendors, publishers and academic groups, launched a library to gather community-contributed insights regarding chemical reactions that have gone bad in laboratories, with the aim of sharing the information to improve safety in the laboratories.
With the increase in frequency and severity of laboratory chemical accidents, the organization solicited library entries from students, postdocs, faculty, staff, EH&S personnel and collaborators from Oct. 17 to Oct. 31. Fu’s submission was selected as one of three winning contributions to the library.
She holds a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Houston. She provides guidance to researchers on chemical safety and has contributed to chemical accident investigations here at UH.
“Providing input to the events library to warn others of chemical reactions that may go wrong is a great service to the research community,” Fu said. “The Pistoia Alliance’s CSL provides a rich data source of hazardous reaction information worldwide, where people can access easily. It will not only improve safety for scientists, but will help train future generation of researchers.”