Medical Illustration Podcast - Albert Fung interview, featuring Geoff Cheung

After graduating from the Biomedical Communications program at University of Toronto–Mississauga in 2010, Albert Fung was brought on to a team at Toronto General Hospital that focused on medical education tools for anesthesia and surgery–Preoperative Interactive Education, or PIE for short. Albert spearheaded a surgical video project that integrated 3D animation with live footage from the OR–what would later become TVASurg, or the Toronto Video Atlas of Surgery.

In this interview, Albert shares a bit of history on how a BMC project--the Axillary Lymph Node Dissection (ALND) procedure-- of his would later become his future job. Albert’s being hired at PIE to start work on surgical videos with OR footage enhanced with 3D animation–this didn’t exist anywhere else, but Albert brought this vision to life.

Geoff Cheung graduated from BMC the same year as Albert, 2010, and worked closely for many years with a former podcast guest, and legend in the field, Dr. Gaël McGill at Digizyme. Geoff also has featured courses on the learning platform Clarafi and founded his own biomedical visualization company Carbon Coded Studio in 2016. Recently, Geoff completed a Masters of Fine Art from the University of British Columbia in 2024 and has shown his work in numerous gallery exhibitions:

This conversation was recorded in 2018, and I’ve chosen to revive it because when I listen back, I think it’s interesting that just about everything in this conversation is still relevant today. What Albert mentions about his path into school and eventually his job, how he acquired his skills and the challenges he and many others like him have faced–I think it all still rings true. Please enjoy this conversation!