NIOSH Presents 2015 Science Awards for Innovative Occupational Health, Safety Research

Press Contact: Stephanie Stevens (202) 245-0641

Today, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recognized several NIOSH researchers and partners for their significant contributions to the field of occupational safety and health over the past year.

The annual awards are an opportunity for NIOSH to honor researchers for excellence in science that informs and supports the prevention of work-related injuries, illnesses, and deaths. The awards include the following:

• The Alice Hamilton Award, for scientific excellence of technical and instructional materials by NIOSH scientists and engineers;
• The James P. Keogh Award, for outstanding service by an individual in the occupational safety and health field;
• The Bullard-Sherwood Research-to-Practice Award, for exceptional efforts by NIOSH researchers and partners in applying occupational safety and health research to the prevention of workplace fatalities, illnesses, or injuries; and
• The Director's Award for Extraordinary Intramural Science.

"Strategic research stimulates the scientific evidence, practices, and technologies that are essential for keeping workplaces safe and healthy,” said NIOSH Director John Howard, M.D.  "We are proud to recognize the dedicated employees of NIOSH and their partners, whose contributions engage the changing demands of the 21^st Century workplace while continuing our progress against persistent legacy hazards.”

Named after Dr. Alice Hamilton, a pioneering researcher and occupational physician, the Alice Hamilton Award is given for outstanding contributions in the areas of biological sciences, engineering and physical sciences, human studies, and educational materials. The submissions go through a rigorous review by panels of scientific experts, including peers from both outside and inside NIOSH. The 2015 awardees have contributed to an array of sectors, highlighting the broad range of occupational safety and health.  Among other accomplishments, research and outreach by this year's awardees contributed to protecting workers on the front lines of the Ebola response from job-related exposures to the virus, reducing home healthcare workers’ risk of incurring painful and potentially disabling injuries, supporting sustainable safety and health programs in small businesses, improving the safety and health of truck drivers, preventing injuries from repetitive and forceful tasks in poultry processing, and building a base of knowledge for identifying and preventing chemical exposures in oil and gas field operations.

The James P. Keogh Award for Outstanding Service in Occupational Safety and Health recognizes a current or former employee of NIOSH whose career "exhibits respect and compassion for individual workers, with tireless leadership, courage, and a fierce determination to put knowledge into practice to enhance their well-being." For 2015, NIOSH honored Dr. Kathleen Kreiss, a dedicated leader in the field of occupational lung disease, who, over the course of three decades, has made extraordinary contributions to occupational medicine through her research, education, and public health work.  Research led by Dr. Kreiss was instrumental in identifying and preventing previously unrecognized occupational hazards such as flavorings-related bronchiolitis obliterans (“popcorn lung”), flock-workers’ lung, and adult-onset asthma associated with damp buildings.

The Bullard-Sherwood Research-to-Practice Award, named for the inventor of the hard hat, Edward W. Bullard and the inventor of the personal industrial hygiene sampling pump, R. Jeremy Sherwood, recognizes recipients for outstanding contributions in three categories: knowledge, interventions, and technology. This year’s awards went to NIOSH’s pioneering Center for Workers’ Compensation Studies, an updated school curriculum for incorporating worker health and safety into instructional courses for today’s working teens, and a partnership for reducing silica dust exposure from asphalt pavement milling machines.

The Director's Award for Extraordinary Intramural Science recognizes outstanding collective contributions to science excellence at NIOSH by individual intramural scientists and support staff. The Distinguished Career Scientist award was presented to Dr. Raymond Roberge, a recognized leader in research for designing comfortable and tolerable personal protective equipment (PPE), and for advancing PPE and respiratory protection for healthcare workers.  The Early Career Scientist award was presented to Dr. Cara Halldin for leadership and collaboration in research and health surveillance to prevent serious and debilitating occupational lung diseases, including flavorings-related bronchiolitis obliterans and coal workers’ pneumoconiosis.  The Scientific Support award was presented to Jerry Kratzer for providing engineering technical support by expertly fabricating and modifying equipment used in NIOSH’s occupational safety and health research.

For more information about the NIOSH Science Awards, including winners and nominees for all categories, go to http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/awards/.

For more information about NIOSH research activities, go to http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/.

NIOSH is the federal agency that conducts research and makes recommendations for preventing work-related injuries, illnesses, and deaths. For more information about NIOSH visit http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/.

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