Director: Center for BioMedical Visualization
St. George's University
Greetings, and welcome to the wonderful world of Andreas Vesalius! My name is Sue Simon, Faculty and Director of the Center for BioMedical Visualization - the medical illustration unit within the Department of Anatomical Sciences, School of Medicine, St. George's University, Grenada. I have been a medical illustrator since 2003, working in various specialty fields including pharmaceutical education, defense work for medical malpractice cases, and for the last 10 years within medical schools both in the US and the Caribbean. The BVIS team at SGU is responsible for creating illustrations, animations, interactive learning programs, digital and printed 3D models, and other engaging visual educational materials for the medical students. These creative works distill down complex information across multiple content areas including anatomy, pathophysiology and microbiology into a more digestible format, simplifying difficult concepts for quicker understanding. We also facilitate in the anatomy wet labs and dissect. My passion lies in education, specifically finding new ways to engage students in an increasingly digital world of learning. For inspiration, I often find myself looking into the past. This is why I was drawn to Andreas Vesalius, and where I am currently focusing my research efforts. Vesalius was an anatomist who lived in the 16th century duing the height of the Renaissance, and encouraged his students to learn from direct observation rather than the accepted method of learning mainly from texts. He took a novel approach to this by becoming the professor, demonstrator and dissector, previously roles that would have been held by three different individuals. Not only did he discover multiple errors in the texts the students were using because he performed his own extentensive dissections, he wrote a text that ultimately signaled a monumental shift in medical science, showing the human body in ways it had never been seen before.
