Bioinformatics Master’s Provides a Gateway to Growing Industry

In 2023, the Ontario government invested $3 million to help six life sciences companies develop and market locally-made medical innovations and healthcare solutions. This news and the province’s newly formed Life Sciences Innovation Fund, which provided the funding, highlight the importance of strengthening the local industry that encompasses bioinformatics. The advancements also put into focus the growth of biotechnology and bioinformatics jobs in Toronto and the surrounding region.
Insight10, a healthcare-focused market research firm, reports that the bioinformatics market in Canada is projected to grow from $1.23 billion in 2022 to $4.11 billion by 2030, registering a compound annual growth rate of just over 16 per cent. The main driving factors, the report concludes, are robust infrastructure for research and development, government funding, and a collaborative market.
Forward-looking and responsive to such labour market and industry needs, Northeastern University in Toronto provides graduate students the opportunity to enter the exciting sector. The school’s Bioinformatics Master’s equips learners with the skills and knowledge to develop, evaluate, and deploy bioinformatics and computational biology applications.
What Can Bioinformatic Be Used For?
A relatively new field, bioinformatics combines biology, computer science, and information technology to analyze and interpret patterns in biological data. Its main goal is understanding diseases’ and biological processes’ genetic and molecular mechanisms, making it particularly useful in studying genomes and cellular functions.
Because bioinformatics gives meaning to large amounts of data, it can be used for everything from diagnosing a rare condition and identifying the best treatment for a cancer patient to tracking and monitoring infectious organisms as they move through a population. In drug discovery, meanwhile, computational modelling and simulations help identify potential drug targets and predict the interactions between drugs and biological molecules. This accelerates the drug development process.
With biological data sets increasing in size and complexity, this field goes beyond healthcare. It also impacts industries as wide-ranging as environmental management, forestry, and agriculture.
Bioinformatics Jobs in Toronto and Beyond
One company that received funding from the Life Sciences Innovation Fund is Juniper Genomics. The company has developed a proprietary approach that uses whole genome sequencing, bioinformatics, and data to give patients and clinicians as much certainty as possible that embryo transfers for IVF will succeed. Juniper Genomics is also an example of the types of companies providing bioinformatics jobs in Toronto. Another company contributing to the market is Mississauga-based Roche, a global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Overall, approximately 4,500 people in the Toronto region work as bioinformaticians.
Opportunities are not limited to the Greater Toronto Area. Over the last two and a half years, Ontario has attracted over $3 billion in life sciences investments. The province is the largest life sciences jurisdiction in Canada. Its health and life sciences sectors employ more than 70,000 people across 1,900 firms. The province is also home to domestic and multinational companies, startups, hospitals, research centres, universities, technology incubators, and scientists.
Make an Impact with a Bioinformatics Master’s
Northeastern University in Toronto offers a graduate-level program in this discipline that prepares students for interdisciplinary thinking, research, and the pursuit of innovation-driven discoveries. A differentiating factor of this Bioinformatics master’s program is its experiential approach. Rather than focusing solely on theory, students bridge the gap with practical learning and application through the university’s signature co-op program. Students also have the option to complete a capstone course designing and conducting a short research project as a stand-in for co-op if a placement becomes challenging to find.
To offer an even more curated educational experience, Northeastern University in Toronto allows students to explore their interests through numerous concentrations. Among them are:
- Bioinformatics enterprise (integrating business and management skills with life science).
- Biotechnology (offering a solid foundation in basic biotech concepts and skills).
- Omics (preparing students to analyze extensive data sets related to genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics and new-omics fields as they evolve).
If data analysis, computational modelling, and the potential to push the envelope on the question, “What can data informatics be used for?” fascinates you, an exciting career in this growing field could be your ideal choice.
By Izabela Shubair
Sources:
https://datascienceforbio.com/biotechnology-vs-bioinformatics/
https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/outlook-occupation/24504/ON
https://toronto.northeastern.edu/academic_program/master-of-science-in-bioinformatics/