I started my career in computer science. With a PhD in computer science, I had many career options.
I decided to get into bioinformatics because it was taking off shortly after I finished my PhD. It was very exciting — lots of opportunities, lots of great work being done.
It was good, but it was a little bit abstracted. It was a little bit separate from immediate applications.
So I began thinking about cancer research. Also, I wanted to get into this field for more personal reasons.
Like many people, I have a personal connection to cancer. My uncle passed away about 10 years ago. He was quite young — he was only in his 50s and he left behind three children in their 20s. So he got to see his kids grow up, but his grandkids have never got to meet him.
I can identify with that because I never met one of my own grandparents because he too passed away from cancer.
Working in cancer research is an opportunity to give something back, to help people see their grandkids grow up or to meet their grandparents when they otherwise might not have been able to.
This career change involved relocation for me because I’d spent a lot of my career in the UK. The reason I moved specifically to Toronto is because of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research because I’d heard about it from colleagues. I’d heard it was a good place and it was doing good work.
It really did change my life. And here I am now. I love living in this city and doing the work that I do. And I really am happy and proud to be with such great colleagues because everyone here knows that we are working to help people with cancer.
Dr. Iain Bancarz is a computational biologist and manager of the Clinical Genome Interpretation team at OICR. He is originally from Edmonton, lived much of his life in the UK, returned to Canada in 2018 and has worked for OICR since then. He loves cycling and once did a sponsored bike ride from Cambridge, England to Paris, France to raise funds for cancer research.