Wentao Zhou ¹ and Cesar Magana ² , ¹ USA, ² California State University Long Beach, USA

With a large portion of educators and students having experienced laboratory accidents, there’s been a clear shortage of laboratory safety education, leaving young chemists defenseless against hazardous situations [1]. To address this, I developed ChemSafe AI, a mobile application combining digital safety education with real-time hazard support[2]. The app features 3 key systems: A Lab Planning Assistant for reviewing experiments, an Emergency Assistant for immediate emergency guidance, and a Camera System for visual hazard recognition. Development challenges arose when differentiating visually similar compounds with images proved to be impractical, forcing a redesign of the camera system to generate accurate safety protocols by instead analyzing contextual clues in photos. This change proved to be successful, as experimental testing revealed that the system had high detection and classification accuracy across various images. Ultimately, through guidance and education, ChemSafe AI hopes to become a reliable digital mentor, used to reduce lab accidents while restoring confidence within young aspiring chemists to safely pursue individual experimentation [3].

Laboratory Safety, Artificial Intelligence, Hazard Recognition, Mobile Application