Celebrating 75 Years of Biomedical Communications
While 2020 began like many other years–the return from the annual holiday break and the resumption of teaching and learning–the Biomedical Communications program looked forward to making the new year unique by celebrating its 75th anniversary.
But only weeks into the school year, life was disrupted like rarely before.
On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus a global and deadly pandemic. Two days later, University of Toronto President Meric Gertler announced the cancellation of all in-person courses across the university’s three campuses.
WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 11 March 2020
Important announcement from President Gertler regarding COVID-19
Over the course of a weekend, with creativity and courage, and under the leadership of program Director Jodie Jenkinson, the Biomedical Communications program pivoted. By Monday, March 16 teaching and learning moved online. The critical training and education of biomedical visualization specialists continued.
Professors Jenkinson and Michael Corrin, BMC’s Associate Director, packed and delivered the program’s computer technologies to students at their homes, where many now lived in isolation.
Nicholas Woolridge, Associate Professor and past Director, and Marc Dryer, Associate Professor and Associate Chair Undergraduate, Biology, coordinated unprecedented remote access to computer workstations and software. Second year graduate students, with only eight months left in their programs, successfully resumed work on their capstone Master’s Research Projects.
Professors Jenkinson, Woolridge and Derek Ng, Assistant Professor in BMC, established the COVID-19 Visual Media Resource for use by journalists and educators communicating and teaching about COVID-19.
The biomedical communications community responded by donating their animations, visualizations and information graphics to the resource. As the body of scientific knowledge grows about the virus, they continue to do so. The work of biomedical communications specialists is now crucial to the response to vaccine hesitancy.
The global COVID-19 pandemic peeled back the social veneer over racism and inequity, and the dire need for mental health support.
Professor Jenkinson, Associate Professor Shelley Wall, BMC students, and members of the BMC Alumni Association established BMC’s Anti-racism Committee (BMC-ARC.)
BMC-ARC is reviewing professional and institutional practice in the field in order to better understand how the discipline has been shaped by colonialism, and ultimately, how we may work collectively to enact change.
The Biomedical Communications program’s 75th anniversary passed unacknowledged.
A new year
Here we are now at the top of 2021. While still teaching, learning and working online, we finally have the bandwidth available to reflect upon and celebrate the past 75 years of this unique-in-Canada program.
We invite you to attend the 2021 BMC Speaker Series, The Road Less Travelled.
In this online series, guests share unusual career paths that brought them to work at the frontiers of science communication in fields from augmented reality, virtual reality, data visualization, graphic medicine and animation to game and product development.
Beginning May 31 and throughout the month of June, we also invite you to visit our online gallery of historic and contemporary scientific visualizations and medical art–our contributions to the understanding, the communication and the advancement of science and medicine.
We are ready for what the future brings.
