A US National Research Council committee met on 15–16 May in Washington DC to start developing safety recommendations for chemical researchers in academic and national laboratories. The project was spurred in part by three high-profile accidents at US academic laboratories between 2008 and 2011. Behavioural scientists, chemists and safety experts will identify problems at research institutions and learn from effective safety systems in industry to develop the recommendations, which will be released next spring. Chemists and behavioural scientists “can learn from each other,” says committee chairman Holden Thorp, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.