This past week WorldSkills Calgary 2009 was held in Calgary and I was there with Genome Alberta at a booth in Alberta House. We were helping the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Medicine showcase their traveling exhibit of CAVEman. This is the world’s first complete object-oriented computer model of a human body. This significant development allows scientists to visualize their medical and genomic data as 4D images.

Here we are providing special glasses for the viewing of CAVEman.




Schools all over Alberta started back a few days early this year so that their students could take the field trip of a lifetime, spending a day at WorldSkills Calgary 2009. We were set up just inside Alberta House with the traveling version of CAVEman. As students and other visitors came past our area, we handed them special glasses allowing them to view a short film projected in 3D. This film allowed the viewer to see inside the human body as a drug passed through the digestive system and into the body. I was teamed up with Dr. Oscar Meruvia-Pastor much of the two days I spent at WorldSkills. He helped me explain visualization and processing of medical data through what has been dubbed the CAVEman by the team who created it. The new science of Bioinformatics combines what we know about genetics, metabolism and biochemistry with computer imaging and analysis. It is no wonder that this display was chosen as one of the examples to illustrate Alberta’s theme, “freedom to create, spirit to achieve”.