A thought leader in the profession, the Foundation supports quality, ground-breaking research. We focus on risk-assessment, sustainability, and global governance, shoring up the profession for long-term growth and impact.
ASSE Foundation Research Grants support the development of knowledge, innovative methods, systems and other appropriate interventions for advancing safety and health in the workplace. Research grants assist safety and health professionals in mitigating the risks of injury and illness in the workplace and help develop and grow research talent in the safety and health field.
Professors and students seek positions in active, research-supportive environments where they can collaborate with engaged colleagues and study important challenges in their field. Student involvement in research promotes high-level problem solving, creative thinking, and analytical skills that are important attributes to success as a future OSH professional and leader.
The benefits of ASSE Foundation funded research programs are tremendous and extend to students, faculty, universities and the OSH profession.
The Foundation and the Liberty Mutual Research Institute sponsor an annual Safety Research Fellowship. The fellowship encourages safety research activity and provides a forum for linking safety professionals, industry needs, and quality research programs.
Selected fellows work with Institute researchers at the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety in Hopkinton, MA facility for four to six weeks. The Foundation provides a stipend, while the Institute provides reasonable access to current research projects, databases, equipment, researchers, and other necessary resources. Research must result in publication.
Applicants must be United States citizens, or permanent residents, and possess a Ph.D. degree, or be working towards a masters or Ph.D.
Research may be viewed by members in our publication, Professional Safety, a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal that promotes the linkage of practice, education, and research providing contributions to the understanding or improvement of OSH processes and outcomes. Below are some samples:
Safety professionals and their organizations should look upstream into the management and work systems during investigations as sources for organizational learning that will ultimately improve safety.
This study illustrates high noise levels and potential hazards at the midlevel NCAA basketball event.
The wind turbine industry has grown significantly and many training programs have begun. This article examines the development of a safety course for prospective wind technicians within the OSHA-10 topics guidelines.
Safety professionals should encourage team members to use building information modeling (BIM) for safety and educate them on how to look for safety concerns during the BIM review process.
This study has shown that the conditions and restrictions of the job environment play a large role in the selection of methods nurses use to perform patient-handling tasks.
SH&E professionals need to understand the physical exposures that workers encounter in order to provide appropriate treatment options for injuries and make return-to-work decisions. Such exposure estimates are made more difficult by the increasing diversity of jobs and the variability of work tasks within a single job. No universally applicable measure is available for assessing work-related physical exposures specifically for musculoskeletal disorders. A new and potentially useful source of occupational information is the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), which contains Occupational information on more than 900 occupations.
Universities are typically not viewed as industrial facilities, yet they face many of the same regulatory concerns, such as hazardous waste, air quality and storm water, as industrial facilities. University of Houston has implemented several measures to reduce the amount of chemical waste generated and shipped off campus for disposal.
As adults age, they are more likely to experience falls and fall related injuries. This is thought to occur as the result of age-related declines in postural control. However, little is known about how, or whether, postural control changes with age in healthy working-age populations. This research examined changes in the postural control using a set of traditional statistical measures and a nonlinear time-series analysis called Sample Entropy. The findings, their implications and future applications for developing models to predict and prevent falls are discussed.
Distracted drivers are common on today’s roadways. Although many people believe that distraction is a threat to safety, they may engage in distracting activities while driving because they believe that they can handle distractions with ease. The results from this study suggest the following: 1) Drivers’ estimates of their distracted driving ability do not become more accurate over time. 2) Feedback may play a role in calibrating people’s estimates of their distracted driving ability.