Announcing the winners of the Esch Awards for Capstone Design

Friday, April 4, 2014

It was an action packed afternoon as 15 Capstone Design team finalists pitched their projects to win over $60,000 in awards!

On April 4, Waterloo Engineering hosted the first annual Esch Entrepreneurship Capstone Design Awards, culminating two weeks of extraordinary student innovation at the 2014 Capstone Design Symposia.

View gallery of Esch Entrepreneurship and Sedra People's Choice Awards

Host Matt Stevens, CEO of Cross Chasm, kept the pace moving and the audience cheering, as a panel of judges hammered 15 finalists with questions on sales, marketing, data security and product development.

Team members had 30 seconds to answer each question following exactly 90 seconds on stage to make a compelling business case for $10,000 in funding.  What was their pricing model? Did they consider their product to be evolutionary, disruptive or transformative? Were they ready to go to market? How much capital did they need to get there? 

Following a brief jury deliberation, six outstanding teams were awarded $10,000 each.

The winners of the 2014 Norman Esch Entrepreneurship Awards for Capstone Design are: Flood Defender, Grayscale Coatings, MAJiK Systems, MIXBOX, On-The-Go and Wearability.

Congratulations to our student entrepreneurs! 

Trustees of the Esch Foundation were on hand to present the awards, which support creative and entrepreneurial students in the pursuit of research and development and its commercialization for the benefit of Canada.  

Former Dean of Engineering Adel Sedra was on hand to present the Sedra People’s Choice Award. 

Wearability with former dean of engineering Adel Sedra winning Sedra People's Choice Award
Wearability, with former Dean of Engineering Adel Sedra, was awarded the Sedra People's Choice Award and the Norman Esch Entrepreneurship Award

Named in his honour, the award of $3,000 was presented for the best Capstone Design Project as voted by the audience. It was very close. By a margin of one, the award went to Wearability, a double winner! 

The 2014 Esch Entrepreneurship Award Winners 

Flood Defender 

An automated system to reduce the rate and intensity of water damage in apartment buildings.

Program: Mechanical Engineering

Team Members: Scott Duncan, Jarret Cauchy, David Lee

Faculty Advisor: Steve Waslander

MAJiK Systems

A white label CRM that builds in real-time machine monitoring software for factories and machine manufacturers.

Program: Management Engineering

Team Members: Kamal Aman, Jared Evans, Mike Tatham, Adam Singer

Faculty Advisor: Stan Dimitrov

On-The-Go

An easy to use mobile app that records and splits expenses between users while travelling.    

Program: Management Engineering

Team Members: Nick Ghotbi, Nasif Addnan, Riley McLeod

Faculty Advisor: Mark Hancock

MIXBOX 

An iPad app that allows users to create new music from existing music with minimal skill or effort.

Program: Software Engineering

Team Members: Peter Sobot, Ryan Bateman, Chris Taylor, Wen-Hao Lue

Faculty Advisor: Patrick Lam

Grayscale Coatings

An innovative reflective roof coating that will cool in warm months and heat in cool months.

Program: Nanotechnology Engineering

Team Members: Farzana Yusufali, Roy Lee, Ioana Craiciu, Lindsay Brock

Faculty Advisor: Jean Duhamel

Wearability

An electromyography (EMG) shirt that measures electrical activity in muscles during gym workouts

Program: Systems Design Engineering

Team Members: Marc-Andre Simard, Pratik Konnur, Adam Thagard, Chris Menezes

Faculty Advisor: Daniel Stashuk

MAJIK Systems receiving cheque for Norman Esch Entrepreneurship Award
MAJIK Systems receiving cheque for Norman Esch Entrepreneurship Award