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Lab Safety & Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)
Lab Safety
Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S) requires that everyone working in a lab at UMass receive basic lab & fire safety training soon after they arrive.
Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)
If you are going to be conducting any kind of research on vertebrate animals, then you must have an approved animal use protocol on file in the Animal Care Office. The Office is located in the Research Administration Building.
- Before you begin writing a new protocol, check with your advisor. There may already be a protocol on file, but you need to make sure that it has been updated to include you as a researcher and you must have a copy of it.
- If there is no current protocol on file, work with your advisor to complete one before any animal research is conducted.
- IACUC requires that anyone who is listed on an approved protocol and who is going to have contact with animals must undergo appropriate training, including graduate students, undergraduates, and potential field and laboratory technicians.
- The protocol approval and training process can be lengthy, so it is best to begin as soon as possible once you know you will be working with vertebrate animals.