Playing it safely: Liberty Mutual's Research Institute for Safety—celebrating its 50th birthday this month—has been at the forefront of the battle against occupational injuries in the United States. In the next 50 years, it will continue to flex its muscles around the world

Risk & Insurance, June, 2004 by Michelle Kerr

A giant screen on the wall allows researchers to view the results and adjust the instrumentation as necessary without missing a beat.

In the upper extremity lab, a quirky motorized contraption helps researchers study the interaction between workers, tools, machines or equipment during repetitive manual tasks like cutting meat or scooping ice cream. Brightly colored slabs of something like Play-doh inhabit another table, where subjects cut into them with knives to simulate slicing through sirloin.

Amid other machines in the manual materials handling lab, one piece of equipment looks like a torture device that might have been popular during the Salem witch trials to procure confessions. In fact, its true purpose is quite benevolent, for use in studying the rehabilitative effects of exercise on patients with acute low back pain.

And in the driver safety lab, an innocuous-looking white minivan serves as a lab on wheels, loaded with gizmos and gadgets worthy of a James Bond movie, including strategically placed eye tracking cameras and other devices that allow researchers to measure driver performance. A computer console installed in the back lets researchers ride along on the half-mile automotive test range and gauge reactions instantly.

Far from waiting around for the birthday candles to be lit, the Institute's staff is already at work on what it will likely be celebrating at its 100th birthday bash. The roster of research projects will continue to evolve, of course. But look for the Institute to expand in other, more global, ways.

REACHING OUT

"My world is constrained by a 47-person head count," says Leamon, referring to the number of researchers and staff on site. "I'm not going to expand that a whole lot in the near future, so if we want to do more, the only way that's available to me is to [develop] some very specific partnerships."

The Institute has already formed partnerships with research organizations around the world, including Tsinghua and Fudan universities in China, the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, the British Health and Safety Laboratory and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Similar programs with organizations in Vietnam are currently in the works.

Leamon is pleased with the partnerships that have been established so far, particularly those in China. "Tsinghua is the No. 1 engineering school in China. And what we're doing is combining our intellectual resources. And with the University of Fudan--that's probably the No. 2 school of public health behind Peking--we've published maybe 15 or 20 papers with them in the last six years."

On a map of the world that pinpoints all of the Institute's global efforts, a good portion of the surface is already covered with the exception, so far, of Africa. But Leamon's dream is to move the global expansion to the next level.

"What I would like is for this place to become a collaborating World Health Organization center for occupational injury," he says. "That's my ambition. Typically, collaborating WHO centers are either in government or in premier universities. There's not a single example of a commercial operation like ours [attaining that status] so we have an uphill struggle ahead.