Extraordinary. Outstanding. Remarkable. These are just some of the of the many ways that this year’s recipients of the President’s Research Excellence Awards have been described.

At the Faculty of Medicine Annual Faculty Meeting held virtually on June 2, a few of the many people dedicated to research, teaching and mentoring at Dalhousie Medical School were celebrated and recognized for their efforts and achievements over the recent academic year.

When Dal’s Faculty of Medicine made the move to shut down all in-person learning in the middle of March, the Human Body Donation Program was also suspended, a rare or perhaps even unique event in its roughly 150-year history. It would not be long, however, before the program would be re-started to meet a new and urgent need: training in safe airway management and intubation procedures for frontline health care staff.

Convocation is a special time of year at Dalhousie Medical School; the culmination of so many journeys and experiences, a celebration of both time spent on campus and exciting new chapters set to begin. Although convocation will be celebrated virtually this year, 118 medical students have earned the right called to be “doctor” and to join the profession of physicians. Here are the stories of just a few of them:

The first Canadian clinical trials for a potential COVID-19 vaccine will be led by researchers at Dalhousie University, with testing set to begin as early as the next few weeks.

When third-year medical student Livia Anthes was awarded the Annie Hamilton Scholarship in Medicine last spring, she never could have imaged that just a year later it would be a source of safety and security during a global pandemic.

It has taken an almost-herculean effort, but Dalhousie’s first- and second-year medical students (Med 1 and Med 2) have barely missed a beat in their training, even as stay-at-home orders in response to the COVID crisis have taken them out of their lecture halls and simulation classrooms since the middle of March.

Dr. Mark MacLean, a second-year neurosurgery resident in the Faculty of Medicine recently received the K.G. McKenzie Memorial Prize for Clinical Neuroscience Research – the top research prize in Canada for a neurosurgery resident.

Dal infectious diseases, vaccinology and immunology researchers are pursuing vaccine, antiviral, point-of-care testing and immune-boosting strategies as quickly as they can, in collaboration with their colleagues in the newly formed Canadian COVID-19 Research Network. The good news is, they are not working from scratch.

It was an evening of colourful costumes, dancing doctors, and singing pirates. Yes, EUPHORIA! returned to the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium this past Saturday, February 22 for its 51st performance to raise money this year for the Halifax Sexual Health Centre.