Past events & courses

This two day practical course provides a comprehensive and sound practical introduction to auditing. The course takes participants through the principles, recognized best practices and essential techniques of (HSE / biosafety) auditing. 

Management of risks related to activities with hazardous biological material, be it research, development, production or diagnostics, requires risk assessment at various stages of the activity. To begin with, the hazards of the various biological materials need to be estimated. When genetic modification is involved methods and tools such as viral vectors, plasmids and types of inserts need to be considered. At a second stage biosafety and biosecurity measures need to be evaluated for their ability to contain the biological material. These measures on their own, whether organizational or technical, have their weaknesses and might be vulnerable to failures which need to be taken into account in incident and accident prevention. Advance application of several techniques (such as Fishbone, HAZOP, LOPA, SWIFT, Kinney, FMEA, HACCP, SSQ, Fault-tree, Bow tie, Brenner … ) to manage and assess risk especially in the areas of genetic modification, materials that have an insufficiently defined risk or information, animal and plant related work.

Biological waste originates from human or animal health care, medical and biotech research, laboratories, greenhouses and other facilities. Careful disposal of this type of waste is an integral component of the organization's biorisk management. 

Small animal biosafety: sourcing and selection of animals, containment of small animals, their safe manipulation (handling, inoculation, force feeding, etc.), different experimental systems (infectious organisms, viral vectors, etc).

Have you ever been in a situation where you had to deal with biological material and had no clue what kind of pathogens it might contain? Have you wondered whether these specimens were containing higher risk group agents than group 1 or 2. Have you wondered how to keep yourself and your colleagues safe when dealing with these specimens whether in research or diagnostics, specifically when it came to  processing large numbers of samples ?

This short course will introduce the issues and practical approaches to developing and influencing an effective biosecurity programme. The course will introduce delegates to the issues required to develop an effective biosecurity programme at the institute level. The course includes practical and theoretical aspects to adopt and to determine risk.

This course is intended for all biosafety professionals involved in training, setting up training programs, choosing training methods and tools, evaluation, assessment and particularly for those, giving training.

Learning outcomes from this course: • Describe the differences in sterilisation, disinfection and decontamination • Pros and cons of different chemical disinfectants • Evaluate disinfection options and applications

This two day course will introduce participants to the basics of working safely in a BSL3 laboratory. The course content was adapted from the BSL3 biosafety course of the Swiss Biosafety Curriculum. Participants will perform risk assessments, learn more about BSL3 design and engineering, get introduced to BSL3 specific PPE and use it, cover aspects of waste management and room fumigation, exercise using safety equipment under BSL3 conditions and go through different emergency scenarios amongst other things. The focus of the course lies clearly on practical exercises which limits the number of people who may attend to 8. This is a very intense course that will ask a lot from participants.