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"Other templates didn't necessarily ask you to think about what you were putting on them because they allowed it all," says Derek Crowe, a PhD student in biomedical genetics in Hucky Land's lab with a former career in visual communication and design, "In order to use Mike's layout though, my hand is forced."

With the new template, scientists need to think about their core message, but some people have a difficult time figuring out how to do that, or how to use visuals to present their message. Without proper science communication training, even a better poster template doesn't work.

Crowe has taken matters into his own hands. Not only does he teach a course on visual communication for scientists at the University of Rochester, but he also shared his poster design tips online. In a nod to Morrison's "better poster", Crowe's is a "butter poster". He provides step by step instructions on how to organize the poster, and how to think about the content in a visual way.

"Like the graphic novel did for literature, visual languages have the power to add more dimensions to scientific storytelling," says Crowe, "I'm excited to see what happens as the greater science community begins to take advantage of well-established visual storytelling tools."

URMC recently extended a previous tissue-banking agreement with Indivumed, a private company, to include a new partnership for whole genome sequencing. Hucky Land, Ph.D., director of research at the Wilmot Cancer Institute, is leading the partnership with a project to sequence 2,000 colorectal cancer samples from 1,000 patients by the end of the year, and to develop novel software tools enabling complex cancer data analysis in the future.

The latest agreement with Indivumed also enabled the URMC Genomics Research Center (GRC) to purchase a state-of-the-art Illumina NovaSeq6000 DNA sequencer. The equipment signals a new era for genomics at the University, as it will aid research advancing personalized medicine, including discovery of new therapies to improve cancer outcomes. It also allows URMC investigators to perform whole genome sequencing for a fraction of the previous cost.

Based in Germany, Indivumed helped the URMC in 2016 set up a centralized tissue bank for collecting high-quality samples from surgical patients for cancer research. Once a tissue sample is examined to make a diagnosis, the remaining tissue is stored in the "Rochester Cancer Library" and available to URMC, Wilmot, and Indivumed scientists. The samples can be correlated with patient survival data, response to treatment, and other meaningful information for researchers.

In addition to Land, faculty who have been integral to the agreements with Indivumed include Steve Dewhurst, Ph.D., Vice Dean for Research at the SMD; David Linehan, M.D., chair of Surgery, director of Clinical Operations at Wilmot, and a pancreatic cancer researcher, who serves as the supervising investigator for tissue banking; and Bruce Smoller, M.D., chair of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, who led efforts to operationalize the tissue bank.