Rising Star Award

Dr. Abby White running a workshop at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress

Congratulations to Cardiac Surgery Resident and PhD Candidate Dr. Abigail White on receiving the Canadian Association for Medical Education’s Rising Star Award, which recognizes learners who demonstrate a commitment and/or passion for medical education. Her supervisor Dr. Bin Zheng says, “I think I do not need to say too much about Abby's commitment and passion to medical education and research. We all see her spending every minute outside her busy clinical service for simulation design and validation. This award is a perfect recognition of her dedication.” Dr. White’s project is creating a portable and adjustable model for cardiac surgery – a task trainer that is adjustable to three different levels of difficulty. She is preparing the innovative learning device she has invented for commercialization. Dr. White says, “With an ever-changing landscape of surgical practice, we need to find innovative ways to optimize our surgical training, with the center of our focus forever being the patient.” 

Dr. White recently won the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry’s 75th Anniversary Award and Violet Kilburn Award (a graduate excellence scholarship). She is one of six graduate students in the Surgical Simulation Research Laboratory, which brings together disciplines including engineering, computing science, education and psychology, applying technologies from artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, digital 3D reconstruction to surgical training, headed by Director Dr. Zheng. As more and more advanced technologies are being introduced to the operating theatre, surgeons face new challenges in maintaining their confidence under image-guided and remote-controlled environment. Equipped with eye-tracking and 3D motion tracking system, the research team studies the eye-hand coordination, spatial orientation, and the skills acquisition process of surgeons in image-guided surgeries, including laparoscopic, endoscopic and robotic surgery. The internationally recognized SSRL is key to the success of the Department of Surgery’s surgical simulation program, which is one of the few in the country that is accredited by The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. The University of Alberta is the only university in Canada to offer trainee surgeons the opportunity to apply innovative educational techniques and given them Master Degree in Surgical Education. We have two world-class research institutes – The Ray Rajotte Surgical Medical Research Institute and the Surgical Simulation Research Laboratory – and are one of the few universities where full teams train together: nurses, surgeons and anesthetists.