The Wonder and Beauty of Science

As a child, Audra Geras inspected and scrutinized the plants and insects in her garden. The intricate complexities of nature captivated her from a very young age. She zoomed in on anything that was normally hidden. The most insigni cant, in nitesimal organisms burrowing around in the mud and on the plants became her subject matter. As a little tyke, she began to draw and paint them. By the time college came around, Geras decided against going to the Ontario College of Art, instead opting for honors biology at the University of Toronto. In what can only be understood as eerie foreshadowing, or maybe even postshadowing, she paid her way through biology school by drawing zoological and botanical illustrations for her professors. Born and bred from such an intrinsic art-science crossover, Geras found a natural next step when she then entered the art as applied to medicine (AAM) program in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, a program now called biomedical communication. Discovering a program that allowed her to harmonize both of her passions in a yin-and-yang fashion gave her all the repower she needed. “I had been getting increasingly suspicious that my interest in science came from an artistic sensibility and not a scienti c one,” recalled Geras. “I recognized that I was some kind of strange hybrid. Once I read about the medical art program, I knew instantly that that was what I wanted to do.” Six months before graduating, Geras started her own biomedical art business and never looked back. Today she works for numerous clients, everything from advertising agencies to pharmaceutical companies. Even though her work always serves the client’s needs rst—whether it’s a high-impact ad campaign or illustrating skin fungus—there’s always an element of creative passion underneath it all.