Professor Craig Merlic, a leader in laboratory safety education and practice, contributed to the newly released “ACS Discovery Report: Laboratory Safety,” which highlights ongoing efforts to improve laboratory safety and cites work from the UC Center for Laboratory Safety.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) Discovery Report examines the current state of laboratory safety in academic and research settings, highlighting persistent challenges as well as emerging best practices to protect students, researchers, and staff. Merlic’s insights are woven throughout the report and the UC Center for Laboratory Safety is cited repeatedly as a model for how institutions can embed safety as a core scientific value rather than a compliance exercise.
As the executive director of the UC Center for Laboratory Safety, Merlic has been instrumental in advancing a culture-of-safety framework that emphasizes leadership, education, and continuous improvement. The ACS report draws directly on this work, referencing Center-developed scholarship and programs that demonstrate how evidence-based safety initiatives can reduce risk while strengthening research integrity.
Of the nine scholarly citations included in the ACS Discovery Report, two are publications produced by the UC Center for Laboratory Safety, reflecting its growing influence on national conversations around safe research practices. Merlic also co-authored a third major safety report developed in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), further extending the Center’s reach beyond academia into federal research environments.
In the ACS report, Merlic stresses that meaningful progress in laboratory safety depends on sustained institutional commitment. He notes that effective safety programs are those that empower researchers at all levels—from undergraduate students to principal investigators—to recognize hazards, communicate openly, and take shared responsibility for safe scientific work.
Merlic is a renowned expert in laboratory safety and chemical safety management. He has served as the executive director of the UC Center for Laboratory Safety since 2014. In addition to his leadership roles at UCLA and the UC system, Merlic has been involved in various national safety initiatives, including advising the National Institute of Standards and Technology on research safety as a federal commissioner in 2023, and training environmental health and safety staff as chemical safety officers at the National Institutes of Health.
The Safety Training Consortium, created through and managed by the UC Center for Laboratory Safety, now provides laboratory safety training materials to 65 universities across the nation including all ten UC campuses and universities such as Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Northwestern, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penjen@g.ucla.edu.
