Research and support facilities available to students in the program:
Excellent teaching facilities and laboratories are available for graduate instruction, demonstration, and thesis investigation and research. SRPH's new 99,000 sq ft facility includes a 7,000 sq ft., state-of-the-art environmental and occupational health laboratory and a 1500 sq ft., state-of-the-science usability laboratory, which is generally used for small-scale and ergonomic usability tests and data processing of exposure assessments performed in the field for safety and industrial hygiene review. The 7,000 sq ft. environmental laboratory space includes a sample receipt and preparation area, a cell culture room, a media preparation room, and chemical hoods and biological hoods for working with blood and urine samples. Equipment located in this area includes an Accelerated Solvent Extraction (ASE) unit and a Zymark turbovap unit for rapid drying of solvents from extracted samples. The cell culture room also includes fume hoods, as well as two bacterial incubators and a CO2 incubator for growth of mammalian cells. The media preparation room includes an Agarmatic and Pourmatic for preparation of biological media and an automatic plate counter. A teaching laboratory and an analytical laboratory are also in the new building. Instruments in the analytical laboratory include a Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer, and a High Performance Liquid Chromatograph.
Usability Research is conducted in the usability lab throughout the three phases of the usability engineering lifecycle which include: requirements analysis, design/testing/development, and installation. The usability laboratory is designed to analyze all three of the lifecycle phases. The usability laboratory has ergonomics equipment including a lumbar motion analyzer, digital and analog force gauges, goniometers, levels, scales, pressure transducers, accelerometers, digital and analog heart rate and blood pressure monitors, rulers, digital video and digital still cameras, computers with video editing software, height adjustable tables, stands and ergonomic stools and chairs. Industrial hygiene and safety equipment includes gas monitoring pumps (handheld and electronic), noise equipment (dosimeter and octave band analyzers with stands), ventilation flow sensors for air flow and volume analysis, smoke for ventilation visual checks, respirators and cartridge gas masks and dust masks, fit testing equipment (banana oil etc.) for full face respirators, HAZMAT gear/ppe (full suits, over-boots, gloves, decontamination gear, etc.), light level meter, Draeger style sampling tubes (multiple substances and ranges), dose badges, collection media, radioactivity dosimeters and geiger counter, LOTO set (locks/labels), confined space permits, extraction equipment, hard-hats, fire extinguishers and 2-way radios, and fall-protection equipment. A variety of instrumentation is available for human performance, anthropometry, work physiology, and manual materials handling. The ergonomic center's interdisciplinary team includes faculty and students from ergonomics, human factors, safety and bioengineering, kinesiology, physiology, epidemiology, statistics, occupational medicine, computer science, and psychology. The four areas of research emphasis are manual materials handling, office ergonomics, manufacturing, and fatigue and reliability. Research in manual materials handling includes energy expenditure, four-wheel cart pulling and pushing forces, two-wheel cart pulling and lifting forces, and worker conditioning, flexibility, and strength. Office ergonomics research encompasses large monitor studies, mobile computing, and input devices (keyboards, mice, etc.). Research in the manufacturing area contains work organization, work methods, risk assessment, hand tools, and heat stress. Fatigue and reliability research consists of extended work shifts, prolonged standing, and constrained standing.
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