A Prescription for Graphic Medicine by Shelley Wall

Graphic medicine is a rapidly growing area of creation, research and teaching that brings together the visual/textual language of comics with stories of illness and health care.

Read Professor Shelley Wall’s full article on Public Libraries Online.

Body of work: The pioneering women behind the groundbreaking Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy – U of T News

Read about the female illustrators behind the famed Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy and their pioneering work establishing the field in Canada

https://www.utoronto.ca/news/body-work-pioneering-women-behind-groundbreaking-grant-s-atlas-anatomy

Michael Corrin Promoted to Associate Professor, Teaching Stream

The Master of Science in Biomedical Communications is delighted to share that Michael Corrin has been promoted to associate professor in the teaching stream with continuing status.

Professor Corrin’s research interest are on professional education and the design of optimized virtual learning environments; in particular, those that include interactive computer-mediated three-dimensional objects.

The BMC community congratulates Professor Corrin on this achievement and wishes him the best for his continued success!

BMC brings home the awards from AMI 2018

Biomedical Communications students and alumni returned successful from this year’s Association of Medical Illustrators’ annual meeting. The conference took place in Newton, MA in July, and a number of student, alumni and faculty from the BMC were in attendance.

BMC winners in Student Categories

Didactic/Instructional-Anatomical/Pathological

Chelsea Canlas – Pathology of Oral Herpes – Award of Merit

Aileen Lin – False Alarm : Having a panic attack – Award of Excellence

Didactic/Instructional – Molecular/Biological/Life Sciences

Felix Son – Quantification of Cellular Organelle Size – Award of Merit

Felix Son – ATR-inhibitor : a novel approach to targeting the Achilles’ heel of cancer – Award of Merit

Editorial 

Andrea Lam – Ladybugs & satellite design : folding for outer space – Award of Excellence

 Lucas Lin – Automated robotic surgery – Award of Merit

Amanda Miller – Pigeons as pathologists? – Award of Merit

Lisa Qiu – Tomorrow’s perfect humans – Award of Merit AND Orville Parks Student Best of Show

Animation

Chelsea Canlas, Natividad Chen and Annie Tseng – Medical Genomics : from research to patient care – Award of Excellence

Lauren Huff – Adoptive Cell transfer : a new type of cancer immunotherapy – Award of Merit

Lee Jung-Hee – What is DLAC? – Award of Merit

Congratulations to all the winners!

Read more about the representation of BMC at the AMI conference on the BMCAA website.

In memoriam: Carolyn Teare-Richardson, BScAAM ‘79

Carolyn Teare ca. 1976

Alumna Carolyn Teare-Richardson (BScAAM ‘79) passed away on July 6, 2018 at the age of 62. Her obituary describes her as a beloved wife of 39 years, daughter, mother and grandmother. Carolyn, it reads, was known for her compassion, and friends and family “were drawn to her generosity, open spirit and welcoming, accepting nature.”

Carolyn studied drawing, painting and design photography for two years at the Ontario College of Art before she enrolled in Art as Applied to Medicine at the University of Toronto in 1976.

“She was a ray of sunshine and had a wonderful sense of humour,” says Audra Geras (BScAAM ‘79). Audra and Carolyn roomed together when they were students.

Professor Emerita Margot Mackay (BScAAM ‘68) taught Carolyn in the program’s Animal Surgery and Surgical Illustration courses. “The words that come to mind when I think of Carolyn are wonderful, talented, energetic, enthusiastic and a very outgoing individual,” says Margot.

After Carolyn graduated from U of T in 1979, she first moved to Belleville, Ont. In 1980, she wrote to then program director Nancy Joy. “Belleville, as you might guess, is not a hot spot for medical art. However, I have had a few really good jobs from Proctor & Gamble.” She wrote that she “kept busy” designing advertisements for local businesses and learning sign language to work with children at the Sir James Whitney School for the Deaf.

Early adopter

Carolyn eventually moved to Vancouver where she joined UBC Biomedical Communications, a network of medical education departments in the various teaching hospitals linked with the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine.

Ewan Forbes, who hired Carolyn to work in the Department of Biomedical Communications at St. Paul’s Hospital, says Carolyn was a positive person with an extremely strong worth ethic. He says that while many others were skeptical about the new world of computer graphics, she was enthusiastic and embraced the new technology.

And when budget cuts loomed, Carolyn stood with Ewan to fight to maintain the department. “While three of the four biomedical communications departments in Vancouver closed, including the main centre at the University, ours survived and thrived, and is still the only one that remains open and true to the values of acting as a full support department to the UBC Faculty of Medicine,” says Ewan.

Although he knew Carolyn had numerous medical issues, including Parkinson’s disease, he says he was not prepared for her sudden loss. “Our family and Carolyn’s were the very best of friends. We spent almost every weekend together during the Vancouver years. Her passing was a complete shock.”

Welcoming

It was alumna Jane Rowlands (BScAAM ‘86) who wrote to the U of T Biomedical Communications Alumni Association to say that Carolyn had passed away.

When Jane graduated from Art as Applied to Medicine, she too took a position as a medical illustrator with UBC Biomedical Communications. Jane says Carolyn reached out to welcome her.

“I was a fresh grad from U of T AAM, and from Montréal, so not familiar with Vancouver at all,” says Jane. “She was incredibly welcoming. Carolyn oozed enthusiasm and was so passionate about her work.”

The second-most senior medical illustrator in UBC Biomedical Communications, Carolyn worked at St. Paul’s Hospital until the early 1990s.

World traveller

Born in Long Island, NY to a Canadian father and American mother, Carolyn lived in Toronto, Vancouver, Wassenaar, Netherlands, and Cleveland. After she retired, Carolyn studied art in Europe and painted portraits and landscapes into her final days.

Carolyn’s family was with her when she passed away. A service was held July 11 at Church of the Covenant in Cleveland, OH. Although Carolyn’s family did not identify a specific destination for donations, they did request that memorial gifts be made to Parkinson’s research in general.

How Art Makes Better Science by Maeve Doyle

Joanna Liang’s (MScBMC 1T7) reconstruction of Habelia optata at the Royal Ontario Museum’s “Spiders: Fear & Fascination” exhibit will be displayed until January 2019.

Read the article written by Maeve Doyle , on the AMI website.

Vesalius Trust Awards 2018

Congratulations to Chelsea Canlas, Natividad Chen, Patricia Nguyen and Amanda Miller on being named Vesalian Scholars.

Congratulations, too, to the recipient of a Vesalius Trust Research Grant: Aileen Lin.

The Vesalius Trust annually awards scholarships and research grants based on scholastic achievement and research project merit. A list of previous recipients is available on the Vesalius Trust website.

Read more about this year’s recipients on the BMCAA website.

Dr. Jodie Jenkinson’s tenure and promotion

Professor Jodie Jenkinson, BA, MScBMC, PhD (Photo Credit: Olivia Adamczyk)

The Master of Science in Biomedical Communications is delighted to share that University of Toronto President Meric Gertler has approved Dr. Jodie Jenkinson’s tenure and promotion to associate professor, effective July 1, 2017.

Professor Jenkinson’s research focuses on the role that visual representations play in learning. This includes investigation along various lines of inquiry including the efficacy of visual media within different learning contexts, the design of visual representations for optimal impact, and the development of standards of visual communication in the scientific visualization community. To learn more about Professor Jenkinson’s research, please visit her Science Vis Lab.

The BMC community congratulates Professor Jenkinson on this achievement and wishes her the best for her continued success.

Call for entries: Art of native Canadian plants

Announcement: Art of the Plant exhibition

Biomedical Communications alumna Kerri (8T7) Weller announces a call for entries into the 2018 exhibition Art of the Plant. Art of the Plant is Canada’s contribution to a global exhibition initiated by the American Society of Botanical Artists. The exhibition is designed to connect people worldwide to plants through contemporary botanical art.

“Hundreds of artists around the world are seeking out plants native to their home countries and capturing them in paint, pencil and ink to raise awareness of wild plant diversity,” says Weller, chair of the Canadian exhibition. Participating countries include: Australia, Bermuda, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, France, Germany, India, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, South Africa, New Zealand, Thailand, South Korea, United Kingdom and the United States. “My team and I have been working for months to lay the groundwork and secure a national venue.”

The Canadian national juried exhibition opens in Ottawa at the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Stone Wall Gallery, and online, in May 2018. In addition to the national show, Canada’s five botanical art societies will present non-juried member exhibitions in their regions, says Weller.

The deadline for entries into the national exhibition is midnight January 15, 2018. For submission rules, see Art of the Plant: Call for entry.