It was -80 degrees cool to be on hand at UCSF's 12th Annual Chancellor’s Sustainability Awards and hear Senior Vice Chancellor Erin S. Gore talk about a whole-campus effort to retire our least energy-efficient freezers in favor of Energy Star models. The ability to reliably and efficiently cold-store biospecimens is an essential part of research supply chain at UCSF.

Thanks to Supply Chain Management (SCM) staff members Dean Shehu (co-lead of the program), Charles Sabia, Greg Phillips, and our warehouse staff, who are there to greet every new freezer at our loading dock and help it to its new home in San Francisco. Congratulations also to our campus collaborators like Trish Hackemack, Mary Anne Hallacy, Gail Lee, and others who make this initiative cooler than cold!

Dean shared his gratitude: “We are grateful for the enormous institutional support we’ve received from our SCM colleagues, faculty, senior leadership, and $3 million in funding to replace 300 of the most inefficient ULT freezers. We are proud to be part of a project that will create a lasting improvement in UCSF’s carbon footprint and financial resiliency. Sustainable cold storage management provides an attractive return on investment while proactively protecting valuable research materials.”