Roma Maraj-Owen Makes Sure Wistar Lab Health & Safety is Her Top Priority

Roma Maraj-Owen, director of Laboratory Operations and Environmental Health & Safety, leads the Environmental Health & Safety Department here at Wistar. Roma oversees a team responsible for safety & compliance. Her team has the important task of overseeing all things related to biosafety, including the management of hazardous chemicals.

What made you pursue environmental health and safety?

I completed an undergraduate degree in pre-med, but it was not the right fit. So, I interned with the oil and gas company British Petroleum (BP). I absolutely enjoyed the work and found my work passion. Being from Trinidad and Tobago, which is known for oil & gas, this experience heavily influenced my career path.

What was interning & then working at BP like?

I first interned with BP and later worked with them between undergrad and grad school. During my time at BP we were certifying our offshore rig to the ISO14001 standard. This involved conducting safety training with the rig workers and risk assessments, as well as evaluating safety policies and practices.

Working on an offshore drilling rig is physically demanding, and without the proper safety training, it can be dangerous. A worker’s shift is 30 days on the rig and then 30 days off. While on the rig, workers are fed high-calorie foods to sustain their energy. To help people manage the calorie intake, I ran a lot of workshops to support their physical health, as well as courses on general safety.

It terms of safety programs, we ran helicopter crash survival training — because for rig workers, that’s your commute to work. We’d place you in a simulated helicopter hovering above the deep end of a pool, and the helicopter drops into the water, flips upside down, and you’d have to get out. I enjoyed the work, and I was exposed to a lot of facets of EHS, which included writing environmental impact statements; monitoring the noise impact of the production facility; working in the jungle on the pipeline; and organizing beach cleanups.

Why did you go back to school?

I had a passion for EHS, but at the time, there were no Ph.D. programs in the field. So, I went to Hunter College because they offered a master’s in environmental and occupational health sciences. I was part of the first group of graduates to receive a scholarship from NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety) Occupational Health Internship Program (OHIP). Here, I worked with Cal OSHA on employee exposure to graffiti removal chemicals that affected the health of pregnant women.

What did you do after grad school?

My first job after graduate school was as an EHS industrial hygiene consultant. Here, as an EHS professional, I had exposure to a wide field of industries. I worked with large-scale pharmaceuticals, hospitals, universities, and commercial businesses. Some of my clients were Pfizer, NYU, CBS, CNN, Cushman and Wakefield, and others. I later transitioned to academia and healthcare as the assistant director of Chemical and Biological Safety at Virginia Commonwealth University and VCU Health.

What was your first role at Wistar?

I was the EHS manager and biosafety officer, and I developed the BSL3 safety program and managed laboratory safety.

What’s your role now at Wistar?

A biology and chemistry background are essential to my role at Wistar because I evaluate experiments for compliance with NIH guidelines and potential danger to our scientists. I also conduct risk assessments for pathogens and hazardous chemicals to ensure safety protocols are followed.

I’ve returned to Wistar in a new capacity that combines laboratory operations and environmental health and safety, and I’ve been able to provide better support to our scientists and allow for deeper dives into compliance and safety.

Under laboratory operations we want to support the science, so we look at the Institute’s laboratory needs and how best to support the common use equipment, space, and the utility needs within that space. That also includes onboarding and offboarding labs and researchers. On the EHS and biosafety side, we look at OSHA and EPA regulations, CDC, NIH, and other regulatory body guidelines and their application to lab safety and research compliance. This may include laboratory inspections, registration of biological materials, chemical safety, employee occupational health, incident investigations & risk assessments, and so much more!

My team includes facility manager and biosafety officer Michelle Ho; EHS manager Cristina Brady; lab operations & EHS research operations coordinator Jamie Richards; implementation specialist and systems & electronic notebook manager Alyssa Jarrell; and laboratory operations assistant Maurice Brandon. They each play a crucial and specific role in ensuring safety and compliance across Wistar.

We also have an institutional biosafety committee composed of Wistar PIs and administrators who work together to evaluate and ensure that any proposed experiment will not cause harm to users and the environment.

What’s the goal of the EHS Department?

Our #1 goal is making sure everybody who comes through Wistar’s doors for work leaves in the same condition they arrived. We want our scientists to carry out their experiments safely, so we have to interpret the science to understand what type of experiment the scientist is doing to determine whether they’re complying with regulations and mitigating potential risks to the scientist and the environment.

We ask questions like, “Are we working with a pathogen or rDNA? What are your experimental procedures? How are we using it? Can it be an aerosol? What chemicals are you using and where are you handling and storing your chemicals?” Ultimately, the biggest question we seek to answer is, “How can we protect our employees and the environment?”

What do you do in your free time?

I enjoy reading books about pathogens and outbreaks, such as House on Fire about smallpox. But my favorite place in the world is at the beach. I’m an island girl at heart (from Trinidad and Tobago), and that’s where my happy place is. My best friend lives in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and we try to go there at least once a year.