Banner season to mark 50th anniversary
If you’ve looked up lately to see a passel of red blood cells hovering over your head, never fear—it’s just the Stanford Medical Center’s way of celebrating its 50th year in Palo Alto.
The brightly colored cells are one of six banner designs popping up around the medical school campus this month. The banners are already lining the perimeter of the medical center, including Pasteur Drive and Welch Road. By the end of August, they’ll flutter on lampposts along El Camino Real in Palo Alto.
The banners commemorate the medical center’s 1959 move from San Francisco to its current location. The change in locale is credited with fostering greater collaboration between researchers on the main campus and at the School of Medicine.
Each banner image represents a facet of the medical school and hospital. The blood cells are a symbol of Stanford’s commitment to basic research, as is the photo of the late Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Arthur Kornberg, MD, peering at a model of the DNA double helix. Two banners are dedicated to patient care, one of a woman with a stethoscope and another of a man in a surgical cap. A photograph of the late Norman Shumway, MD, PhD, who pioneered the human heart transplant at Stanford, represents clinical excellence, while an image of students peering into microscopes evokes Stanford’s commitment to education.
The banners will remain on display until early October. They will be complemented with bookmarks using the same images that will be given out to hospital patients and placed in buildings around campus.
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