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Biotechnology no longer rewards the lone scientist at the bench. The breakthroughs reshaping healthcare, agriculture, sustainability and pharmaceuticals now move from lab to market through a crowd: scientists, regulators, marketers, investors and communicators, all in the same room. The discovery is only the start. What follows is a relay across disciplines and sectors, and the graduates who thrive are the ones who can run every leg of it. 

That is the talent 91��ɫ set out to build. At its Markham Campus, the Master of Biotechnology Management (MBM) and the Graduate Diploma in Biotechnology (GDB) train graduate students to be more than scientists. They train them to lead at the intersection of research, industry and society, where most of the real work in the bioeconomy actually happens. 

The most distinctive thing about these programs is that they arose from a dynamic collaboration across the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Graduate Studies, along with the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) and the Markham Campus, with an industry network woven through every layer.  

“The challenges biotechnology is addressing—from health to sustainability to advanced manufacturing—don’t fit neatly within a single discipline,” says Alice MacLachlan, Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies. “Graduate education has to prepare students to work across those boundaries, bringing together scientific expertise with the ability to collaborate across sectors and translate knowledge into impact.”  

Faculty of Science leadership, including Dean Maydianne Andrade, has emphasized the same conviction: biotechnology should not live only in the lab. Scientific depth would be sharpened, not diluted, by exposure to business strategy, communication, entrepreneurship and professional practice. 

“Biotechnology succeeds when scientific excellence is matched by the ability to generate real-world solutions,” says Dean Andrade. “These programs were developed to preserve the depth and rigour of scientific training while also giving students the skills to collaborate across business, policy and industry. That combination prepares graduates to lead innovation, not simply participate in it.” 

Turning that ambition into a working curriculum involved Department of Biology�����Ի� Graduate Biotechnology Professors Jade Atallah�����Ի� Luz Adriana Puentes Jácome as well as colleagues across the Faculty of Science, Graduate Studies, LA&PS�����Ի� the Markham Campus to help develop and deliver a curriculum that extends beyond traditional academic boundaries. 

The structure itself tells the story: students enrolled in the Master of Biotechnology Management program receive technical and professional training in Biotechnology while completing five science courses, from Introduction to Biotechnology Practices and Laboratory Skills to Data Analysis, Product Development and Commercialization, while simultaneously moving through a Graduate Diploma in Management whose modules run from Financial and Management Accounting to Law and Corporate Governance to Principles of Marketing Management.  

Students do not study science and business in separate boxes. They study how the two collide, how a biotechnology innovation gets developed, financed, regulated, communicated and carried to market. A course like Science Communication and Writing, for example, sits deliberately alongside Research and Development in Biotechnology, signalling that the program treats the ability to explain science as inseparable from the science itself. 

"The goal wasn’t simply to add a few business courses onto a science degree,” says Atallah. “It was to graduate professionals who are fluent in both the science and the business of biotechnology. When individuals across the product lifecycle understand one another, innovation moves more effectively. That benefits Canada's biotechnology sector while giving graduates the versatility to pursue a wider range of career opportunities." 

Experiential education is where the cross-sector ambition becomes concrete, and it runs far deeper than a single internship. Across the program's five-term arc, students engage with the private sector through conferences, projects, panels, hands-on training and a steady rotation of industry guests before the internships even begin. 

Students train through partners such as CASTL (the Canadian Alliance for Skills and Training in Life Sciences, an adMare academy partner), Eurofins and The Carpentries. They attend industry events organized by Life Sciences Ontario, Research Canada, Ontario Genomics and The MedTech Conference, and hear from a roster of classroom guests ranging from entrepreneurs such as the founders of AppArmor to industry leaders like Lindy Forte of EVERSANA. 

The MBM program culminates in a cross-cohort and cross-sector graduate capstone course, an experiential integration of biotechnology and management that asks students to solve a real problem using everything they have learned on both sides of the program. 

The capstone alone is a prime example of collaboration, where senior MBM students completing industry internships work alongside junior MBM and GDB students focusing on science communication, with both cohorts contributing to projects developed in collaboration with life sciences organizations including DNA Labs, ALT-PRO Advantage, Liven Proteins, Eurofins, EVERSANA, Sanofi, Alexion, and Dalton Pharma Services, among others. 

"The capstone project was an incredible opportunity to work directly with an employer and learn how the industry functions beyond theoretical frameworks,” says Elika Malev, a student in the program. “I gained technical skills, made connections, and worked on an impactful project with a company developing an AI-based early lung cancer diagnostic tool. Ultimately, this experience helped me secure my current internship in the field.” 

That model reflects the founding vision Dan Palermo helped set for the Markham Campus, where experiential education is structurally embedded into programs from the onset. Inside the biotech programs, it shows up not only as capstones but also as student internships at companies ranging from BenchSci to argenx and AstraZeneca. Some paid internships are supported in part through Mitacs, which covers roughly half the cost and, crucially, extends the same paid opportunities to international students. 

But keeping industry connections alive takes constant, resource-intensive work. Luz Adriana Puentes Jácome, Assistant Professor in Biology, works directly with industry to pull emerging, real-world challenges into the classroom and to keep the curriculum honest against the shifting needs of Canada's bioeconomy. Outreach, as the team describes it, is intentional, tracked and cultivated over time, a piece of enabling infrastructure as real as any lab. 

“Every partnership we build is a door for a student to walk through,” says Puentes Jácome. The work is constant: we’re always bringing the sector’s newest challenges into the classroom and making sure what we teach still matches what the bioeconomy actually needs. Those relationships are infrastructure, and we treat them that way.”   

Guided by faculty mentors and industry professionals, students dig into thorny scientific and commercial problems, weigh the evidence and deliver recommendations through professional reports and presentations. Communication is treated as a core competency, not a soft skill, so that students can hold their own with researchers, investors, regulators, policymakers and executives alike. 

By the time they graduate, MBM students are well-versed in biotechnology, management, experiential learning and industry collaboration and equipped with a master's degree, a diploma, multiple projects, a capstone and internship experience, as well as a professional development record built from industry training, conferences and panels. 

"One of the greatest strengths of the Master of Biotechnology Management program was its integrated internship component,” says Aparna Maheswaran, an alumna of the program. “It gave me the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the pharmaceutical industry, helping me bridge classroom learning with real-world application. This experience equipped me with the skills, confidence, and professional network to kickstart my career and make a meaningful impact for patients."  

The stakes are real. Canada’s bioeconomy is projected to require , with employers facing hiring challenges driven by a highly competitive labour market, limited awareness of bio-economy careers, and constrained HR and capital capacity in many organizations. Bio-manufacturing is identified as a particularly urgent area of need across both the bio-health sector and the broader bioeconomy.  

In response, 91��ɫ’s programs are structured around employability, with internships positioned at the end of the program so students are prepared to enter the workforce the moment they complete their studies. This workforce alignment is paired with a marked social impact. With roughly 80 percent of applicants coming from underrepresented groups, graduates are also helping to diversify the talent pipeline. 

None of it would hold together without the funders and conveners who act as connective tissue: the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, CEWIL Canada, Mitacs and BioTalent Canada, alongside 91��ɫ’s faculties and industry partners. 

As the bioeconomy keeps evolving, it will keep demanding graduates who move confidently between disciplines, sectors and roles. The biotechnology programs forged across the Faculty of Science, the Faculty of Graduate Studies, the Markham Campus, LA&PS and an industry network offer one answer, and a glimpse of what graduate education can become when interdisciplinary training and cross-sector collaboration are integrated from the outset.