In recent years surgical training programs have adopted a growing number of synthetic models to facilitate convenient training sessions. Currently we are investigating a thermally crosslinked hydrogel system (polyvinyl alcohol) as the base material for developing surgical training models. Some of the training models that we have developed in past work include: skin, small bowel, various blood vessels and heart valves. There is a need to widen the scope of natural tissues that can be mimicked with these materials beyond the capability of a purely hydrogel system. Natural tissues may exhibit widely varying properties of toughness, stiffness etc. that a single material cannot cover. Our research objectives can be broken down into two main goals. Firstly, we aim to improve upon the current polymer system so it can be tailored to produce physical properties which better match those of complicated natural structures. Secondly, we are developing molding techniques to produce multi-component structures and geometrically complex structures which are ever present in the human body. In the former we are investigating the addition of materials to form composites with desired properties. In the latter objective we are investigating the bonding of model components with adhesives and with an overmolding approach to produce multi-component models. Cyanoacrylate adhesives have been successfully used to create butt joints between small diameter tubes (6mm diameter), as well as for fixing models to rigid substrates. Our overmolding approach is versatile, allowing the control of bond strength between materials. This has been successfully implemented in an internal mammary model to allow for the practice of vessel dissection during a coronary bypass procedure. These techniques and materials will be further used to develop models such as: Stomach with Esophagus, Bladder, Hernia Repair, Nephrectomy and Appendectomy models.