Pharmacist and science communicator

For 14 years, Olivier Bernard, pharmacist and creator of the science-communication project Le Pharmachien, has been making science accessible to francophone audiences, helping them in practical ways to think more critically and have more confidence in their own scientific knowledge.

Winner of the 2025 NSERC Award for Science Promotion – Individual Category, Bernard has distinguished himself through his sustained, original, wide-ranging contributions to promoting science and engineering communication to the general public. In 2012, he launched a self-funded, not-for-profit initiative called Le Pharmachien, a platform that now comprises over 200 comic strips and videos that he has produced entirely on his own. His approach combines humour, visual metaphors and scientific rigour to demystify complex health issues and enable citizens to better distinguish what is true from what is false.

Bernard’s work also includes books. Between 2014 and 2023, he published five books on scientific topics for general audiences, which have sold over 100,000 copies in Canada and are also available in Europe. He has also published two illustrated books for children, to awaken their scientific curiosity. On television, his series Les aventures du Pharmachien, broadcast by Radio‑Canada for the past seven years, reaches a wide audience and continues to be used as a teaching resource. His documentary podcast series Dérives (Out of Control) combines empathy with rigour and has had a major influence in the institutional and public spheres. Its first season, entitled Le rituel de sudation (the sweating ritual), received a New York Festivals Radio Awards Gold Award in 2021. The three seasons that followed confirmed this podcast’s success. The most recent season was devoted to the subject of Lyme disease.

Bernard has received many other awards and distinctions, including the Meritorious Service Decoration (Civil Division), awarded in 2024 by Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada; the title of Fellow de l’Ordre des pharmaciens du Québec in 2022 and the Prix Innovation de l’Ordre in 2015; the Prix Marc Lebel from the Faculty of Pharmacy of Université Laval in 2022; Standing Up for Science – The John Maddox Prize, awarded by the journal Nature and the charitable organization Sense about Science in 2019; and the Prix Coup de cœur from the Association pour la santé publique du Québec in 2018.

Through his media productions, lectures and sustained presence in the public space, Olivier Bernard has enabled various audiences to access scientific information that is reliable, thus encouraging informed choices and participation by better informed citizens.