From May 18th to 23rd, U.S. local time, at the invitation of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA), Zhao Qiusheng and Shi Jing---associate professors of the Department of Safety Engineering of our school attended the “2019 American Industrial Hygiene Conference & Exposition” (2019 AIHce) held at the Minneapolis Convention Center in Minnesota, USA. Nearly 60 courses about cutting-edge development in the field of occupational hygiene and 170 seminars about engineering, technology and management were held during the conference. There were also nearly 250 companies demonstrating new products and technologies at the expo. More than 5,000 professionals from all over the world attended the conference.

The school delegation attended the major activities listed in the conference agenda; listened to keynote speeches about noise control technology, occupational hygiene testing and sampling, occupational hygiene data statistical analysis, workplace ventilation, workplace safety and occupational hazard risk analysis; visited the American Industrial Hygiene Equipment Exhibition; viewed the posters about academic papers and learned about the research topics and development trends about occupational hygiene (industrial hygiene) in American universities.

During the conference, our delegation had in-depth exchanges and discussions with many top experts in the field of occupational hygiene engineering, including Dr. Liang Jianan, Chairman of the Gas Sampling Committee of the American Association of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH). The delegation benefited a lot from the discussion and invited the experts to visit our school later. They also reached a consensus with Lawrence Sloan, CEO of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA), on issues such as safety engineering and occupational hygiene engineering discipline improvement, exchanges and visits, training and curriculum systems for registered industrial hygienists in the United States. They were invited to participate in the annual meeting of the Safety Engineering Association held in the United States next year. The delegation attended the course about "Noise Control Technology", which is a cutting-edge technology in the field of occupational hygiene. And they met with experts and scholars from Utah Health University, Missouri Central University, West Virginia University, and Oklahoma State University to discuss about talent cultivation and research and development in the occupational hygiene program that's newly established in our school, as well as the exchange of visiting scholars and joint talent training projects that may be carried out in the future. Mr. Zhao Qiusheng, the associate professor and deputy director of the Department of Safety Engineering, introduced how we applied to establish the first occupational hygiene engineering program in China and the talent training, curriculum setting, inter-school cooperation and employment prospects of the program, which attracted substantial attention from experts. They believed that this was of great significance to the development of occupational hygiene projects in China and even the world, and they looked forward to establishing all-round cooperation with our school in the future.

On the evening of May 20th, the delegation attended a reception held by the American Occupational Hygiene Association. They met with Nicole Greeson, the director of the Department of Occupational Hygiene and Safety of Duke University, Samuel Curtis, the global director of the world’s leading inspection, verification, testing and certification agency(SGS), Glenn Warr, the Deputy General Manager of American Sampling Equipment Co., Ltd. (SENSIDYNE)  and Dr. Jas Singh, CEO of JAS International LLC(a company committed to environment, health and safety consulting and training), exchanged ideas on the international occupational hygiene engineering development and occupational hygiene engineering talent demand, and invited these experts to visit us later.

With a tight schedule and informative exchanges, this visit has yielded fruitful results. The delegation took this opportunity to establish friendly relations with many top international experts and related domestic and foreign companies and colleges, which will help both parties to cooperate in areas such as inter-school communication, expert visits and enterprise support. It has laid a solid foundation for the further development of the occupational hygiene engineering program.

The American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exhibition (AIHce) was first held by the American Industrial Hygiene Association in 1939 and has a history of 80 years. Each conference brings together the heads of related professional institutions or organizations in the fields of global industrial hygiene, occupational health, EHS (environment health and safety), safety, and risk management, making it a world-class industrial hygiene conference second to none.

Safety Engineering Department Party and Administration Office (Foreign Affairs Office)