David Gillum received a flood of phone calls in January, after his university announced that someone in the campus community had been diagnosed with the COVID-19 coronavirus.

Gillum is the director of environmental health and safety at Arizona State University in Tempe, and many of the calls were from biosafety officers around the globe. They were seeking his expertise and guidance in the event that their own institutions were in the same situation.

“Emergencies happen, and it’s up to you to be the one to keep people calm,” says Gillum. But most days in the life of an institutional biosafety officer are much less dramatic. Generally, the officers collaborate with their institute’s scientists to work out how to safely conduct biological research, such as that involving infectious agents or modified DNA. But their roles have expanded over the past decade, as biological research and its hazards have become more complex. Large research institutes and campuses can have dozens of officers; smaller institutes often cover the role in their safety offices.