Education and Research Center
The Harvard T.H. Chan Education and Research Center for Occupational Safety and Health (ERC) is one of the 18 regional centers funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The Harvard Chan ERC supports traineeships at the master, doctoral, and postdoctoral levels.
665 Huntington Avenue
Building 1, 14th floor
Boston, MA 02115
Targeted Research Training
The Targeted Research Training (TRT) Program supports traineeships intended to promote interdisciplinary research training in occupational safety and health (OSH).
Trainees supported by the program may be PhD degree-seeking students from OSH or allied disciplines and postdoctoral trainees in an OSH core or closely allied program area, such as epidemiologic methods, genetics, bioinformatics/computational biology, or social/behavioral sciences.
Trainees’ research training is directed by an ERC-affiliated faculty or faculty with strong research experience in OSH/an allied discipline. Doctoral and postdoctoral trainees will, therefore, have a mentoring committee with faculty from different disciplines.
For some closely related OSH disciplines, collaborative arrangements with other units in HSPH are common. We encourage ERC trainees, where appropriate, to partner with existing research training programs that are based at Harvard Chan School, such as Environmental Epidemiology T32 (in Epidemiology Department), Toxicology, Health Promotion, Total Worker Health and Wellbeing, Cardiovascular, and Reproductive Health T32 ( in Epidemiology Department).
The TRT Program allows trainees from various disciplines to customize a research plan and acquire strong skills in:
- Research design, development, and epidemiological methods
- Quantitative methods (biostatistics, bioinformatics, big data analysis, computational biology)
- Development and application of biomarkers of exposure, outcome, and susceptibility
- Survey design and execution
- Measures of outcomes
- Impact assessment and health communication
- Responsible conduct of research, ethics, and regulatory principles