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Teaching Animation/Printing Project
Dr. Bongsup Cho, Director
College of Pharmacy
Fogarty Hall 224
Kingston, RI 02881
Phone: 401.874.5024
Fax: 401.874.5766
bcho@uri.edu
About the Program
Animation and 3D Printing as Hands-On Teaching Tools
In 2003, we launched our "Teaching Animation Project" as a proof-of-concept project. Since then we produced a number of teaching animation videos in pharmacy and related biomedical sciences. The quality of the pilot animations and their extensive use in classes and on the Internet attest to the enormous impact of the Program on teaching and global outreach. 
To capitalize on this success, we now expanded our capability to include 3D printing and established a new, highly innovative "3D Center for Biomedical Sciences."
The main objective of our "3D Center" is "Making Science Visible in 3D," to help students clearly conceptualize, visualize, and produce complex scientific ideas in 3D. Animation is an innovative hands-on teaching tool and will add to students' learning experience out-of-class. The "3D Center" will not only help produce teaching animations, but also promote university-wide faculty/student collaboration. Students can animate, view, and print models, all in 3-D. Animation, coupled with 3-D visualization, will greatly improve the effectiveness of teaching and the retention of scientific concepts difficult to understand. Our "3D Center" places URI among a select few leading higher institutions using such cutting-edge technologies in their curricula. The project is a result of collaborative efforts from Professors Bongsup Cho (Pharmacy), Marian Goldsmith (Biology, CELS), and Roy Bergstrom (Information Technology Services).
Funding Support
Special thanks to URI's Student Technology Assistant (STA) program, coordinated by Roy Bergstrom, for providing student technical support to the 3D Center. Additional funders are listed below.
| 2012 | Provost Innovative Teaching Grant, "Printing the Unseen: Tangible Student Access to the Molecular and Nano Scale Shape and Interaction." |
| 2011 | Champlin Foundations Grant, "3D Center for Biomedical Sciences: Animation, Visualization, and Printing" |
| 2007 | URI Foundation Grant, "Pharmacy Teaching Animation." |
| 2003 | Champlin Foundations Grant, "Establishment of an Animation & 3-D Stereo Visualization Facility." |
| 2002 | URI Foundation Grant, "Animation-based Scientific Illustration." |
| 1992 | URI Foundation Grant, "Nucleic Acids: Atomic Models as Necessary Aids for Student Instruction in Medicinal Chemistry." |
in the news
Sean Gilman's "Mechanism of Iressa Drug Resistance" featured in the official banner of September 14, 2012 Pharmacy Symposium, Drug Therapy in the 21st Century: Discovery and Clinical Use.
URI's YouTube site of 3D biomedical science videos receives 1 million hits
URI's 3D animation work featured in the January 2012 issue of International Innovation magazine. Article (PDF)
Students touch nano-particles, take robots for walks (Innovations, 2012)
student voices
You get more of a grasp on a concept through a one-minute animation than from two hours of reading a text.