Bioinformatics - Doctor of Philosophy - PHD - Postgraduate / Graduate Program - UBC Grad School

Canadian Immigration Updates

Review details about the recently announced changes to study and work permits that apply to master’s and doctoral degree students. Read more

Notice: Canadian Immigration Updates

Go to programs search

Overview

The Doctor of Philosophy in Bioinformatics (PhD)is an interdisciplinary program that combines the application of computer technology to the management and analysis of biological data. The result is that computers are being used to organize data generated from experiments into databases, develop new algorithms and software, and use this software for the interpretation and analysis of the data into meaningful biological information. For the past ten years, our PhD program has been training students to organize, visualize, analyze and interpret biological data. Students have access to world renowned bioinformaticians at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and the BC Cancer Agency, and have exposure to the latest technologies to develop their skills.

Strategic Program Objectives:

To build on British Columbia's reputation and excellence in bioinformatics.
To integrate bioinformatics into basic biology to further current research excellence in other life science sectors of the province.
To foster collaborations locally, nationally and internationally.

For specific program requirements, please refer to the departmental program website

What makes the program unique?

The Bioinformatics PhD program integrates academic centres in computer science, statistics, molecular biology and biotechnology, with translational groups at hospitals and at the clinical interface. The innovative partnership among the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and the BC Cancer Agency allows students' access to experts in the field of bioinformatics, and exposure to original research and opportunities to complete significant practical work on real bioinformatics problems. Internships allow student mobility between Canadian and international universities, institutions and industries to further enhance collaborations among Canadian high-technology research groups in both the private and public sectors.

UBC provides the chance to learn from some of the best and most experienced researchers and scientists in my field.

Faeze Keshavarz

Program Structure

The major requirement for the Ph.D. is completion of a research dissertation meeting the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies requirements. There are no specific course requirements for the Ph.D. degree program apart from the dissertation. However, the student's Ph.D. dissertation committee has the prerogative to impose course requirements where course deficiencies are perceived.

All doctoral students are required to successfully complete a comprehensive examination, which consists of an oral and written component within the first 36 months of study. All students are required to present a Bioinformatics graduate program seminar upon completion of their program, and before their dissertation defense.

A student's committee for the doctorate will consist of the dissertation supervisor and three others. The supervisor and at least one other member must be members of the Bioinformatics graduate program.

Quick Facts

Faculty Faculty of Science

Mode of delivery In person at UBC Vancouver

Program Components

Dissertation

Academic Unit Bioinformatics Program

Specialization Bioinformatics

Tuition (First Year) Domestic: $5,626.02 | International: $9,883.98

Information Sessions Register

Open All

Program Enquiries

Admission Information & Requirements

Program Instructions

1) Check Eligibility

Minimum Academic Requirements

The Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies establishes the minimum admission requirements common to all applicants, usually a minimum overall average in the B+ range (76% at UBC). The graduate program that you are applying to may have additional requirements. Please review the specific requirements for applicants with credentials from institutions in:

Each program may set higher academic minimum requirements. Please review the program website carefully to understand the program requirements. Meeting the minimum requirements does not guarantee admission as it is a competitive process.

English Language Test

Applicants from a university outside Canada in which English is not the primary language of instruction must provide results of an English language proficiency examination as part of their application. Tests must have been taken within the last 24 months at the time of submission of your application.

Minimum requirements for the two most common English language proficiency tests to apply to this program are listed below:

TOEFL: Test of English as a Foreign Language - internet-based

Overall score requirement: 100

Reading

Writing

Speaking

Listening

IELTS: International English Language Testing System

Overall score requirement: 7.0

Reading

6.0

Writing

6.0

Speaking

6.0

Listening

6.0

Other Test Scores

Some programs require additional test scores such as the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) or the Graduate Management Test (GMAT). The requirements for this program are:

The GRE is not required.

Prior degree, course and other requirements

Prior Degree Requirements

Students admitted to the Ph.D. degree program normally possess an M.Sc. degree in Bioinformatics or a related area, with clear evidence of research ability or potential.

Document Requirements

CV, Official transcripts, three letters of reference, Official English exam scores (if required)

2) Meet Deadlines

3) Prepare Application

4) Apply Online

Research Information

Tuition & Financial Support

Tuition

Fees	Canadian Citizen / Permanent Resident / Refugee / Diplomat	International
Application Fee	$116.25	$168.25
Tuition *
Installments per year	3	3
Tuition per installment	$1,875.34	$3,294.66
Tuition per year (plus annual increase, usually 2%-5%)	$5,626.02	$9,883.98
Int. Tuition Award (ITA) per year (if eligible)		$3,200.00 (-)
Other Fees and Costs
Student Fees (yearly)	$1,144.10 (approx.)
Costs of living	Estimate your costs of living with our interactive tool in order to start developing a financial plan for your graduate studies.

* Regular, full-time tuition. For on-leave, extension, continuing or part time (if applicable) fees see UBC Calendar.
All fees for the year are subject to adjustment and UBC reserves the right to change any fees without notice at any time, including tuition and student fees. Tuition fees are reviewed annually by the UBC Board of Governors. In recent years, tuition increases have been 2% for continuing domestic students and between 2% and 5% for continuing international students. New students may see higher increases in tuition. Admitted students who defer their admission are subject to the potentially higher tuition fees for incoming students effective at the later program start date. In case of a discrepancy between this webpage and the UBC Calendar, the UBC Calendar entry will be held to be correct.

Financial Support

Applicants to UBC have access to a variety of funding options, including merit-based (i.e. based on your academic performance) and need-based (i.e. based on your financial situation) opportunities.

Program Funding Packages

All students accepted by a faculty member and enrolled in the program will be paid a minimum stipend of $24,300/year.

Average Funding

Based on the criteria outlined below, 30 students within this program were included in this study because they received funding through UBC in the form of teaching, research, academic assistantships or internal or external awards averaging $32,229.

9 students received Teaching Assistantships. Average TA funding based on 9 students was $10,203.
20 students received Research Assistantships. Average RA funding based on 20 students was $24,220.
2 students received Academic Assistantships. Average AA funding based on 2 students was $3,698.
30 students received internal awards. Average internal award funding based on 30 students was $9,330.
5 students received external awards. Average external award funding based on 5 students was $20,667.

Study Period: Sep 2022 to Aug 2023 - average funding for full-time PhD students enrolled in three terms per academic year in this program across years 1-4, the period covered by UBC's Minimum Funding Guarantee. Averages might mask variability in sources and amounts of funding received by individual students. Beyond year 4, funding packages become even more individualized.
Review methodology

Scholarships & awards (merit-based funding)

All applicants are encouraged to review the awards listing to identify potential opportunities to fund their graduate education. The database lists merit-based scholarships and awards and allows for filtering by various criteria, such as domestic vs. international or degree level.

Graduate Research Assistantships (GRA)

Many professors are able to provide Research Assistantships (GRA) from their research grants to support full-time graduate students studying under their supervision. The duties constitute part of the student's graduate degree requirements. A Graduate Research Assistantship is considered a form of fellowship for a period of graduate study and is therefore not covered by a collective agreement. Stipends vary widely, and are dependent on the field of study and the type of research grant from which the assistantship is being funded.

Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTA)

Graduate programs may have Teaching Assistantships available for registered full-time graduate students. Full teaching assistantships involve 12 hours work per week in preparation, lecturing, or laboratory instruction although many graduate programs offer partial TA appointments at less than 12 hours per week. Teaching assistantship rates are set by collective bargaining between the University and the Teaching Assistants' Union.

Graduate Academic Assistantships (GAA)

Academic Assistantships are employment opportunities to perform work that is relevant to the university or to an individual faculty member, but not to support the student’s graduate research and thesis. Wages are considered regular earnings and when paid monthly, include vacation pay.

Financial aid (need-based funding)

Canadian and US applicants may qualify for governmental loans to finance their studies. Please review eligibility and types of loans.

All students may be able to access private sector or bank loans.

Foreign government scholarships

Many foreign governments provide support to their citizens in pursuing education abroad. International applicants should check the various governmental resources in their home country, such as the Department of Education, for available scholarships.

Working while studying

The possibility to pursue work to supplement income may depend on the demands the program has on students. It should be carefully weighed if work leads to prolonged program durations or whether work placements can be meaningfully embedded into a program.

International students enrolled as full-time students with a valid study permit can work on campus for unlimited hours and work off-campus for no more than 24 hours a week during academic sessions.

A good starting point to explore student jobs is the UBC Work Learn program or a Co-Op placement.

Tax credits and RRSP withdrawals

Students with taxable income in Canada may be able to claim federal or provincial tax credits.

Canadian residents with RRSP accounts may be able to use the Lifelong Learning Plan (LLP) which allows students to withdraw amounts from their registered retirement savings plan (RRSPs) to finance full-time training or education for themselves or their partner.

Please review Filing taxes in Canada on the student services website for more information.

Cost Estimator

Applicants have access to the cost estimator to develop a financial plan that takes into account various income sources and expenses.

Career Outcomes

12 students graduated between 2005 and 2013. Of these, career information was obtained for 12 alumni (based on research conducted between Feb-May 2016):

RI (Research-Intensive) Faculty: typically tenure-track faculty positions (equivalent of the North American Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor positions) in PhD-granting institutions
TI (Teaching-Intensive) Faculty: typically full-time faculty positions in colleges or in institutions not granting PhDs, and teaching faculty at PhD-granting institutions
Term Faculty: faculty in term appointments (e.g. sessional lecturers, visiting assistant professors, etc.)

Sample Employers in Higher Education

McGill University
Stanford university
University of California - Santa Cruz
Harvard University
Simon Fraser University
University of California - Los Angeles

Sample Employers Outside Higher Education

Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
Vancouver Prostate Centre
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Dana Farber Cancer Institute
Omicia
Scripps Research Institute

Sample Job Titles Outside Higher Education

Postdoctoral Fellow (3)
Independent Scientist
Senior Director of Bioinformatics
Assistant Professor

PhD Career Outcome Survey

You may view the full report on career outcomes of UBC PhD graduates on outcomes.grad.ubc.ca.

Disclaimer

These data represent historical employment information and do not guarantee future employment prospects for graduates of this program. They are for informational purposes only. Data were collected through either alumni surveys or internet research.

Career Options

As biological datasets increase exponentially in both size and complexity, bioinformatics tools have central importance in fields and industries ranging from environmental management, forestry, aquaculture, and biofuels to personalized medicine, drug development, preventative medicine and gene therapy. Individuals who can analyuze and interpret large data sets or "big data" are highly sought after by both public and private sector employers. Academic positions at Universities are widely available in all fields of study.

Ph.D. graduates from the program have gone on to pursue post-doctoral studies at Stanford, Harvard school of Medicine, Max Delbruck Centre in Berlin, Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard, Ontario Cancer Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Santa Cruz, and locally at UBC and SFU. One graduate is an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University and another is an assistant professor at the University of Dalhousie in Halifax, NS.

Alumni on Success

Enrolment, Duration & Other Stats

	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019
Applications	24	22	36	33	27
Offers	5	9	10	9	4
New Registrations	2	6	7	8	4
Total Enrolment	52	49	47	44	42

Research Supervisors

Supervision

Students in research-based programs usually require a faculty member to function as their thesis supervisor. Please follow the instructions provided by each program whether applicants should contact faculty members.

Instructions regarding thesis supervisor contact for Doctor of Philosophy in Bioinformatics (PhD)

All applicants need firm commitment from a supervisor prior to applying.

Advice and insights from UBC Faculty on reaching out to supervisors

These videos contain some general advice from faculty across UBC on finding and reaching out to a supervisor. They are not program specific.

This list shows faculty members with full supervisory privileges who are affiliated with this program. It is not a comprehensive list of all potential supervisors as faculty from other programs or faculty members without full supervisory privileges can request approvals to supervise graduate students in this program.

Gsponer, Joerg (Protein-DNA, protein-RNA and protein-protein interactions)
Hallam, Steven (Microbiome; Microbial ecology; metagenomics; Biological engineering; Synthetic biology; Bioinformatics; Machine Learning; Entrepreneurship)
Hancock, Robert E (Medical, health and life sciences; cationic peptides as anti-biofilm agents; systems immunology)
Haynes, Charles (Protein purification, recombinant proteins, molecular thermodynamics, biocompatible polymers)
Hieter, Philip (Molecular biology of eukaryotic chromosome transmission )
Hinch, Scott (salmon migrations, salmon ecology, salmon fisheries, fish conservation, land use impacts (e.g. forestry) on fish and habitat, Salmon, conservation, ecology, fish ecology, fisheries management, stream, and riperian ecology)
Hirst, Martin (Bioinformatics; Clinical oncology; Genomics; Immunology; Microbiology; Carcinogenesis; Cellular Differentiation; Epigenomics; Leukemia; Molecular Genetics)
Ho, Kendall (eHealth, knowledge translation, educational research, continuing professional development, interprofessional education, evidence informed policy, eLearning, global eHealth )
Holt, Robert (Immunogenetics, Metagenomics - Infectious agents in Cancer, Cancer Genomes, Neurobiology, DNA Sequencing)
Hoodless, Pamela (Computational cell biology; Cancer; Genomics; Medical and biomedical engineering; Nucleic acids studies; Developmental Genetics; Embryology; Embryonic Development; Epigenetics; Heart Valve / Valvular Diseases; Heart valve formation; Liver; Liver development; Stem Cells and Organogenesis; transcriptional regulation)
Huan, Tao (Bioinformatics, n.e.c.; Analytical spectrometry; Metabolomics; Separation science; Cancer progression and metastasis; Human nutrition and metabolism; Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry; Machine Learning; Bioinformatics)
Huntsman, David (hereditary cancer, molecular pathology, cancer biomarkers, Pancreas centre)
Jones, Steven J (Bioinformatics, genome science, mutations, cancer progression)
Karsan, Aly (Hematological tumours; Cancer molecular targets; Leukemia; Hematopoiesis; Genomics and epigenomics; Noncoding RNAs; Aging)
Keeling, Patrick John (Molecular evolution and cell biology of eukaryotes)
Kobor, Michael (Biochemistry; Bioinformatics; Genetic medicine; Genomics; Chromatin Biology; Epigenetics; molecular biology; Social Epigenetics)
Korthauer, Keegan (Bioinformatics; Genomics; Statistics; Epigenomics; Single-cell analysis; Statistical genomics)
Kronstad, James (Bioinformatics; Immunology; Microbiology; Plant biology; Mycology; Fungal diseases of plants; Genomics and Proteomics; Medical Mycology; Molecular Genetics; Pathogenesis of infectious diseases; Plant-Microbe Interactions)
Lam, Wan (Cancer progression; Genome biology; Epigenetics; Molecular Systems Biology; Lung Cancer; Technology Development)
Lange, Philipp (Bioinformatics; Genomics; Pathology (except oral pathology); Cell Signaling and Cancer; mass spectrometry; pediatric cancer; personalized medicine; post translational protein modification; Proteomics)
Leslie, Sabrina
Mansfield, Shawn (plant metabolism, cellulose biosynthesis, lignin biosynthesis, wood formation, wood quality, cell wall biochemistry, tree biotechnology, transgenics, Tree biotechnology)
Marra, Marco (Genomics; Bioinformatics, n.e.c.; Epigenetics and epigenomics; Genetics, n.e.c.; Cancer genetics; Genetics; Epigenomics; Cancer biology)
Measday, Vivien (Chromosome segregation in the budding yeast using molecular biology and genomic tools)
Morin, Gregg (Basic medicine and life sciences; Proteomics; mass spectrometry; RNA processing; Ribonucleoproteins; Splicing; Cancer; RNA sequencing)

Pages

Doctoral Citations

A doctoral citation summarizes the nature of the independent research, provides a high-level overview of the study, states the significance of the work and says who will benefit from the findings in clear, non-specialized language, so that members of a lay audience will understand it.

Year	Citation
2022	Dr. Morgan-Lang charted the global distribution of microorganisms that cycle methane with software he developed for classifying proteins and inferring metabolic diversity of microbial communities. By linking metabolic function to organisms, these computational tools will help us monitor ecosystems as they respond to a changing planet.
2022	Dr. Gagalova studies the genomes of conifers, conifer insect pest and cannabis to find unique markers of evolution. This research looks for genes and features in the genomes to make possible the feature applied research.
2022	Dr. Baghela used statistical learning methods to identify distinct gene expression patterns in early sepsis patients that predict impending disease severity. He indicates these patterns can be rapidly measured in patient blood at hospital admission, providing clinicians with an accurate and early means to predict specific patient outcomes.
2022	Dr. Yang developed novel bioinformatic methods to characterize, model, and simulate nucleotide sequences via descriptive and predictive data analytics. The software and pipelines she developed improved the current understanding of long-read sequencing data, leveraged short-read sequencing information, and facilitated relevant algorithm development.
2021	There are many who believe that genes commonly code for more than one functional product, through a process called alternative splicing. Dr. Bhuiyan studied the evidence for this claim, and showed that - despite what we learn in our textbooks - alternative splicing is not as common as we thought.
2021	Dr. Zhan studied the impact of genome doubling on the evolution of organisms. He found that genome doubling frequently coincides with the formation of new species but does not necessarily improve the evolutionary success of eukaryotic organisms. His work has helped to understand the role of genome doubling in shaping the biodiversity on Earth.
2021	Dr. Chun studied deadly paediatric cancers called rhabdoid tumours using sophisticated DNA sequencing and computational tools. She revealed diverse molecular characteristics of these cancers and discovered that a subset of tumours had more immune activities than others, thus revealing the potential use of immunotherapy for rhabdoid tumour patients.
2021	Dr. Salehi developed a statistical framework that characterises and predicts how cancerous tumours evolve over time, with or without treatment at a single-cell level. His research provides insight into therapeutic strategies promoting early intervention, drug combinations and evolution-aware approaches to clinical management of human cancers.
2020	Dr. Grewal developed machine learning tools for cancer diagnosis and analysis. She found that when given large-scale genomic data, these methods can diagnose rare cancers and learn individual cancer biology. Her research shows that automated machine learning methods can enhance diagnostic and treatment decisions in precision oncology.
2020	Dr. Farahbod studied gene expression in human tissues and showed that observed patterns of expression can be attributed to the diverse cellular composition of the samples. By characterizing this feature of expression data, her study assists us in furthering our knowledge and understanding of the mechanisms behind the regulation of gene expression.

Doctor of Philosophy in Bioinformatics (PhD)

Canadian Immigration Updates

Overview

What makes the program unique?

Program Structure