Market Research Survey
Canadian Bioinformatics Resource - Industry Service

All company specific information will be protected and only aggregate results will be shared. This survey should take approximately 5 minutes to complete.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Objective of the survey
CBR background
Who should complete the survey?
What’s in it for you?
Survey deadline
Partner organizations

Continue to Survey


Objective of the survey
This research survey is run collectively by the NRC, BCIT and Vitesse to determine skills and training needs in Bioinformatics companies in the Western Canada region. The results gathered will allow CBR to develop more precise training services for the Western Canadian Bioinformatics community.

CBR background
The Canadian Bioinformatics Resource (CBR) was established by the NRC to provide centralized bioinformatics resources for the use of National Research Council of Canada. Subsequently, this resource was extended to Canadian academic and not-for-profit researchers in 1999. Throughout its existence, CBR received regular enquiries about the availability of services to Industry. Several NRC reviews of the Bioinformatics community have identified access to bioinformatics expertise and training as highly desirable areas for future extension of CBR into the SME sector.

Hence, CBR is partnering with BCIT and Vitesse (both Hyperlinks) to establish a pilot program that will provide bioinformatics expertise and training to SMEs in Western Canada. These services, among others, will include the following:

  - Expertise and consulting offered through a network of CBR contacts
  - Workshops and training courses
  - Secure access to high-performance computing, tools and data storage
  - Secondment opportunities for industrial personnel to work at CBR or CBRi nodes across Canada
  - On site system analysis and consulting 

Through its services, the CBRi will work to lower the barriers between SME and other bioinformatics researchers (software development and biotechnology) and will aim to provide useful resources that will assist them in their work.

To read more about CBR, visit www.cbr.nrc.ca
To read more about Vitesse, visit www.vitesse.ca

Who should complete the survey
The respondent should ideally be a member of senior management responsible for product strategy, sales, marketing or business development.

Within your organization, you have been chosen to be the appropriate contact person to fill this survey. If this is not the case, please forward this survey to whomever you feel is the relevant person to fill this survey.  If you forward this survey link to others, please let us know so that we may follow up with them.

What’s in it for you?
By participating in course design through this survey, your company has a direct say in what type of bioinformatics training you want, how long it will take, and how much it will cost, putting you in the driver’s seat with CBR and its partners, instead of hoping that generic course offerings will cover what your company needs (unless, of course, a generic course is what you need).   By using this approach, CBR and its partners hope to provide relevant and cost-effective course offerings, maximizing the benefit from the time and money your company or organization might want to invest in bioinformatics training.

Survey deadline
The deadline for completing this survey is May 20th, 2003.

Contact information
If you have general questions about this survey or if you encounter technical difficulties in filling the survey, please e-mail taras.hollyer@vitesse.ca

Partner organizations
The Canadian Bioinformatics Resource (CBR)
CBR provides access to bioinformatics applications, large-volume data storage, basic training and a helpdesk for the Canadian research community. This community includes researchers in the National Research Council and other government departments as well as academic/not-for-profit users associated with universities or hospitals across Canada. CBR has recently received a $600,000 capital grant from NRC to extend service to Canadian SMEs, and has received several equipment donations from Sun Microsystems in support of its bioinformatics education and training role.

CBR has both the hardware needed to establish an industry service, and the expertise needed to maintain the systems and software required to support a training program. In addition, CBR has seven years of experience within the Canadian bioinformatics community and an extensive network of contacts. For more information on CBR, visit www.cbr.nrc.ca

Vitesse (Re-skilling) Canada Inc.
Vitesse is an independent, not-for-profit organization created by the National Research Council, the University of Ottawa and Carleton University and supported by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (Strategic Skills Initiative) to expand the highly successful award-winning pilot program called O-Vitesse.

The program was started in Ottawa to provide industry with software-engineering resources by re-skilling™ under-employed or unemployed science and engineering professionals. It has since expanded to include additional co-op based individualized training solutions for fields such as photonics, bioinformatics, microelectronics, and wireless communications. Vitesse also offers workplace adjustment and enrichment programs for new and existing knowledge workers creating a training model built on the premise of a comprehensive skill continuum.
Vitesse has developed considerable expertise in the provision of technical training courses, and has a well-established record of working with local educational institutions. For more information on Vitesse, visit .

British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT)
BCIT is British Columbia's premier industry-oriented career-training polytechnic institute. Through its Technology Centre, BCIT conducts extensive applied research and development in a wide range of technical fields ranging from advanced computer technologies, Internet Engineering, Wireless and GIS, and advanced Bioinformatics. The Centre’s reputation for establishing world-class research facilities and conducting cutting-edge R&D with an applied focus has drawn projects and clients from across Canada and around the world. From engineering and design to prototype development and testing, the Technology Centre oversees hundreds of projects and provides B.C. companies with millions of dollars worth of applied research and development.

For more information on the BCIT Technology Centre, visit www.tc.bcit.ca.