Melanie Connolly (Conrad)

Melanie Connolly is a Medical Illustrator and 3D Medical Animator with The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in the Department of Surgery. She also creates visual communication in MedTech, Pharma, and pediatric healthcare education through her companies MeCo Visuals and Chicago Medical Graphics. She recently served as the Marketing Director with the Austin Healthcare Council, focusing on local and international healthcare collaboration and transformation.

Melanie received her Biomedical Visualization Master of Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and specializes in the creation of dynamic and clear illustrations as well as animations on biomedical concepts.

Before becoming an award-winning Medical Illustrator, she studied Neurobiology at the University of Texas at Austin and worked at Dell Children's Medical Center in pre- and post-anesthesia care. Melanie's extensive pediatric point of care experience informed her Masters research with the Craniofacial Center at UIC where she created an animation to inform families of children and pediatric patients undergoing surgery to repair alveolar cleft. Melanie's research explored the benefit of visualizations in reducing fear while improving compliance and surgical outcomes.

As a former UIC Microbiology laboratory teaching assistant, she also takes interest in molecular, bacterial, and viral visualizations. With a broad scientific background and healthcare experience, she looks forward to helping your team bridge the gap between what healthcare providers think of as common knowledge, and what is actually common knowledge for patients.