Facilities
Resources available to our graduate students are excellent. All student workstations, computer and audio-visual equipment, library, and staff and faculty offices are used exclusively for the academic program. Equipment is upgraded on an ongoing basis.
Our location & spaces
The BMC program is located on two of the three U of T campuses.
Mississauga Campus
The primary location of BMC (approximately 485 square metres) is in the Terrence Donnelly Health Sciences Complex (HSC) on the Mississauga campus.
The Biomedical Communications graduate space is located on the third floor of the Terrence Donnelly Health Science Centre on the University of Toronto Mississauga campus.
The UTM campus has undergone a significant expansion in the last decade and a half, including Deerfield Hall, Maanjiwe Nendamowinan, the Instructional Centre, the Hazel McCallion Academic Learning Centre, and the Recreation, Athletics and Wellness Centre (RAWC), which houses a fitness centre, elevated running track and eight-lane pool. UTM also has excellent graduate living spaces, all nestled within a beautiful forested landscape along the Credit River.
Within BMC’s space in the Terrence Donnelly Health Science Complex, students will find places to learn and create. Our main classroom and work space is a large, multipurpose room designed to accommodate a variety of learning activities; it has spaces to draw, 18-21 Apple iMacs and modular furniture. Our secondary classroom space is a more intimate space that houses our most powerful computer workstations. Our tertiary classroom space is a seminar room ideal for studying and drawing. Our video editing suite is a secluded space that contains equipment for the creation of video media including a computer workstation and audio recording equipment. When these rooms are not formally being used for instruction they are exclusively available to our students 24/7.
BMC students drawing pig heart specimens in the main classroom.
The BMC seminar room is a perfect place to study and work with peers.
BMC students taking a break after class in the main classroom.
Students and faculty congregate in the main BMC corridor during our semi-annual critique.
The Elizabeth Blackstock Library, housed within BMC, contains over 800 books. It provides BMC faculty and students with immediate access to all principal texts relevant to the program. The library houses famous, rare, out-of-print books that include illustrations from pioneers in the field.
BMC students Colleen Tang Poy and Jenny Chin look through archival material in the Elizabeth Blackstock Library.
BMC students Amy Cao and Jenny Chin looking for reference material in the Elizabeth Blackstock Library.
St. George Campus
The BMC program also has lecture and work space, including a seven seat computer lab, in the Old Admin building (the OA) at 263 McCaul Ave, on St. George downtown campus. This location is within walking distance to the Medical Sciences Building (MSB), university libraries, 7 teaching hospitals, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario, as well as MaRS, the new Scientific Discovery District.
BMC students Shirley Long, Avesta Rastan, and Felix Son working in our computer lab on the St. George campus.
Our Technology
BMC students have access to a wide array of exciting technologies used in the creation and evaluation of visual communication media.
As a student in the program, you have exclusive access to BMC-student-dedicated computer lab spaces. In our main space on the UTM campus, students can access two computer labs: one lab space is filled with up-to-date iMac computers and the other with Alienware Area-51 Threadripper workstations suitable for high-end three-dimensional animation work as well as interactive media development. When on the St George campus, students can use a smaller computer lab space equipped with a combination of iMac and Alienware Area-51 Threadripper workstations.
All BMC workstations are equipped with a wide range of software applications used in the creation of visual media. This includes but is not limited to: Maxon Cinema4D, Autodesk Maya, Pixologic ZBrush, and the Adobe Creative Suite.
Professor Derek Ng teaching first year MScBMC students molecular visualization concepts in the Mac lab space. The Mac lab space is equipped with eighteen up-to-date iMac computers.
Professor Marc Dryer teaching second year MScBMC students 3D-animation in the Windows PC lab space. The advanced computer lab space is equipped with Alienware Area-51 Threadripper workstations designed for 3D animation production and rendering.
BMC students also have access to many other digital tools including:
3D printing software and hardware. We maintain a space for three-dimensional printing that includes a Formlabs Form 2 SLA printer, and Preform software.
A Tobii T60XL Eye Tracker, embedded within a high resolution 24-inch display. The system is capable of tracking detailed, dynamic stimuli over widescreen gaze angles. Eye-tracking technology is used to evaluate where audiences are looking as they consume visual media.
Digital photography equipment including a Panasonic Lumix GH5 with support for 4K HDR and V-Log capture, cine-quality lenses, wireless lavalier mics, a shotgun mic, a lighting kit, and a green screen.
BMC student Christine Shan examining a cured 3D print.
BMC student Avesta Rastan operating a Tobii T60XL eye tracking system. Eye-tracking technology is used to evaluate where audiences are looking as they consume visual media.
Libraries & Laboratories
The University of Toronto Library System offers a superb source of publications (books and journals) as well as on-line literature related to the discipline, notably at the Gerstein Science Information Centre, Robarts Library, the Hazel McCallion Academic Learning Center, and the libraries of the Faculty of Dentistry and The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library has an increasingly comprehensive collection of works, including books on the history of science and medicine with particular strengths in several areas pertinent to the BMC Program, including original copies of important anatomical atlases such as Vesalius’s De humani corpus fabrica.
BMC students have access to Grant’s Anatomy Museum in the Medical Sciences Building. The museum houses the original dissections made for J.C.B. Grant’s An Atlas of Anatomy (1943). This collection represents a superb resource of dissection specimens. Many of the illustrations in this popular text were drawn from the museum specimens by the former Chair of Art as Applied to Medicine, Professor Emeritus Nancy Grahame Joy. Lippincott Saunders Publishing Co. donated the original carbon dust and pen and ink illustrations from the atlas to the Division of Anatomy. These illustrations are presently stored in BMC.
BMC houses over 300 original illustrations that have been donated by some of the most prominent medical illustrators in Canada and the United States. The BMC collection is the only collection of its kind in Canada.
Basic and clinical science courses in the graduate program include advanced studies in anatomy and embryology, neuroanatomy, and pathology. BMC students utilize laboratories and dissection labs in those courses through the home departments. Students also dissect and study fresh tissues. BMC students have access to operating rooms in the nine U of T teaching hospitals.