The Prizes in Entrepreneurship and Innovation 2010

May 14, 2010

The Prizes in Entrepreneurship and Innovation 2009 (PEI) took place on Friday, March 27. Over five hours, undergraduate and graduate students presented a product, technology or innovative service developed through course or research work. But then students had to look beyond science and technology and come up with a business plan to commercialize their idea taking into account such things as developing the product, defining a market and financing. Some alone and some in teams of two, three or four, students had to convince eight judges that their idea was feasible.

Among the 12 projects presented, three undergraduate and three graduate projects were retained. You can read all about the PEI in the April 6 edition of the Ottawa Business Journal.

Here are the winners:

Undergraduate

First Place: RFID Checkout System
# Alexey Borisenko (Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering)
# Lukash Monczak (Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering)
# Ikvir Singh Samra(Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering)
# Ovidiu Draghici (Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering)

The product is a RFID based checkout system in a retail store that allows fast and easy payment transactions. The ongoing problem of long lineups at checkout can be eliminated with the help of RFID technology. With our system, each product will be tagged and as the customers are ready to pay for their items they simply walk through a checkout portal in which all the tags will be read and the total amount due along with the payment options will be presented to the user.

Second Place: USB Data Transfer Device
# Chloé Durand Gonzalez (Bachelor of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering)
# Rolan Youmaran (Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering)
# Georges Chamoun (Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering)
# Mahmoud Abdo (Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering)

At first sight, the U2U flash drive seems like a standard USB flash drive but it offers way more. The U2U flash drive is built in a way that allows the connectivity of another USB flash drive to it. The user can then browse through the content of both memories thanks to a combination of an LCD screen and a joystick built-in the system, transfer specific files between the two flash drives and all that without the need of a computer or any other intermediate. The vision was to create the next generation of the USB flash drive and this is what the U2U flash drive is all about.

Third Place: Ion Ride
# Amirhossein Ketabchi (Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering)
# Imane El Karafi (Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering)
# Mathieu Gaudreault (Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering)
# Yannick Auger Perras (Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering)
# Dominic Robillard (Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering)
# Mark Janelle (Bachelor of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering)

The IR1 Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) that the IonRide team designed can be viewed as an electric vehicle (EV) equipped with a small gasoline engine driven generator for on-board charging. Also, as its name implies, this vehicle is equipped with a Li-ion battery and the vehicle can be plugged to an external wall plug electrical source for recharging. The PHEV is three wheeled with space for two passengers and luggage. An innovative heating and cooling system is designed for maximum efficiency and good performance in cold Canadian winters.

Graduate

First Place: TeraCare
# Wangzhe Li (Doctorate in Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering)

TeraCare Inc. is proposing a revolutionary breast cancer screening scanner using Terahertz-ray. On average, every week 437 Canadian women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 104 will die. Although X-ray screening is extensively used for breast cancer prevention/diagnostic, it is not perfect or benign. It causes the risk of developing breast cancer from X-ray exposure and false test results due to limited detection ability. Fortunately, Terahertz-ray is safe and capable of producing an image that has X-ray-like properties. Terahertz-ray breast cancer screening technology can help more people prevent and diagnose breast cancer better and safer.

Second Place: WeShop
# Hazem Awad (Master of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering)

WeShop helps its user (teenagers & young adults) to ping their social network for advice & opinions when fashion shopping in a physical store.  WeShop gives its customers (Fashion Retailers & Advertisers) unprecedented insight into the shopping habits & behaviours of their clients and allows these retailers to interact with shoppers in truly unique ways offering them very highly targeted and well timed ads, coupons, and special offers.

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