News Release

DOE JGI wins 2010 Ergo Cup

Grant and Award Announcement

DOE/Joint Genome Institute

2010 DOE JGI Ergo Cup Team

image: Representing the DOE JGI at the 2010 Ergo Cup were (left to right): Christine Naca, Bridget Swift, Megan Kennedy, Nicole Shapiro, Marty Pollard, Angela Tarver and Melanie Alexandre. view more 

Credit: Image courtesy of the DOE Joint Genome Institute

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) now has a matched pair of Ergo Cups after winning at the 13th Annual Applied Ergonomics Conference held March 22-25, 2010 in San Antonio, Texas.

The Ergo Cup highlights ergonomic innovations from institutions and multinational corporations. The DOE JGI's winning entry, "Empowering Employees in Ergonomics," was for the Ergonomic Program Improvement Initiatives category.

Ergonomics is the science of designing optimal equipment and practices to reduce musculoskeletal disorders in the workplace. The DOE JGI's entry focused on employee-driven elements of the DOE JGI program that help promote awareness of ergonomics and safety while encouraging employee involvement in both safety and ergonomics.

The DOE JGI also had an entry in the Workplace Solutions category.

The DOE JGI won the 2007 Ergo Cup for its team-driven workplace solutions category entry. The Shake 'N Plate instrument was designed to ease upper body fatigue for employees working on the Sanger sequencing production line that were manually processing 22 cm x 22 cm plates of bacterial cultures

Since 2005, the DOE Joint Genome Institute has focused on the application of genomics to bioenergy and environmental issues, and as DOE JGI employees routinely perform highly repetitive tasks both in the laboratory and in the office, the DOE JGI has an on-site ergonomist who works with staffers to develop ergonomic solutions suited to each worker and the surrounding work environment.

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For more information, contact David Gilbert, DOE Joint Genome Institute Public Affairs Manager at degilbert@lbl.gov.

The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, supported by DOE's Office of Science, is committed to advancing genomics in support of DOE missions related to clean energy generation and environmental characterization and cleanup. DOE JGI, headquartered in Walnut Creek, Calif., provides integrated high-throughput sequencing and computational analysis that enable systems-based scientific approaches to these challenges. Follow DOE JGI on Twitter and Facebook.


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