Current graduate students

Friday, November 17, 2023 7:30 am - 9:30 am EST (GMT -05:00)

Women's Entrepreneurship Day - Women Entrepreneurs Improving Women's Health

Join the Conrad School for this breakfast session as we celebrate Women in Entrepreneurship Day. Our early-morning fireside chat will include incredible women entrepreneurs working to improve health care for women. Hear what they're doing, learn about some of the challenges they face and what they see in store for the future.

Enjoy some coffee, breakfast and networking to start your day.

Thursday, May 25, 2023 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Entrepreneurial PhD Fellowship Live Panel Q&A

Join us to meet two current Entrepreneurial PhD Fellowship recipients and the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) program director!

Successful fellowship applicants will be enrolled in the MBET part-time program, where they complete the three-year part-time program alongside their regular doctoral studies, tuition-free.

Purpose-driven Waterloo PhD students who complete part-time MBET will be uniquely positioned for ground-breaking successes. Students will develop entrepreneurial mindsets, frameworks and business skills alongside the pursuit of commercializing their research.

With more than 800 alumni worldwide, the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) program at the University of Waterloo’s Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business has built a powerful global network of founders and innovators. Many continue to launch new ventures long after graduation.

MBET alumni collectively represent over 120 alumni-owned companies, a number that continues to grow as graduates apply innovative and entrepreneurial thinking across industries and stages of their careers.

Five Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) teams from the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business had a strong showing at the 2026 BMO Apex Startup Challenge, with three advancing to the graduate finals.

CELLECT Laboratories Inc. earned second place in the graduate track and first place in the elevator pitch competition, while Jtcipher secured third place.

The results highlight the impact of MBET ventures and the program’s emphasis on venture creation, pitching excellence and experiential learning.

Professor Nada Basir, with co-authors Jamie Ladge and Serena Sohrab, has had their paper, “Disrupted selves in transition: How women navigate fertility treatments in the context of work” (Basir, Ladge, and Sohrab, 2026), named an Editor’s Choice by the Journal of Applied Psychology.

The study examines how women balance fertility treatments with professional responsibilities, shedding light on work-life transitions and organizational support. This recognition highlights Basir’s ongoing research into complex workplace experiences and its impact on both scholarship and practice. 

The Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business is proud to host and sponsor the Problem Lab’s Winter 2026 Problem Pitch Competition Finals, where Waterloo students showcase their research-driven approaches to tackling today’s most pressing challenges. For the 2026 academic year, themes will align with the Global Futures themes as outlined by the University.

Finalist teams will present their research to a panel of industry leaders and alumni for a chance to win $7,500 in R&D.

Wednesday, January 28, 2026 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm EST (GMT -05:00)

Insight To Creation Speaker Series: A Founder’s Journey from Ground to Flight

Dr. Jeremy Wang shares his entrepreneurial journey from advanced engineering research to co-founding a venture-backed startup operating at the frontier of autonomous aviation. Drawing on his experience as a founder and operator in a highly regulated industry, Jeremy explores what it takes to transform technical innovation into a viable, mission-driven business. 

Open to all students, faculty and staff. Recommended to MBET, E Co-op, BET students.

After the closure of his first venture during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kamal Lutfi entered the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) program seeking a structured path to relaunch as a founder in Canada’s innovation ecosystem. MBET provided the clarity, community, and disciplined approach he needed to rebuild his entrepreneurial foundation.

Kamal credits the program with reshaping his leadership, strengthening his customer-development discipline, and teaching him to leverage Waterloo’s innovation network. He learned to treat each iteration as a hypothesis and to view failure as valuable data.

Today, Kamal is building a purpose-driven venture grounded in validated opportunity and long-term impact. He continues to stay connected to the Conrad School through mentorship, sharing real-world experience, and creating opportunities for future founders. His journey reflects MBET’s core mission: transforming setbacks into strategy and empowering resilient, evidence-based entrepreneurship.

Charles Huxley, Tom Kizito, and Joshua Olonade, three MBET candidates, won the Experience Ventures Hackathon by building a fully functional zero-waste analytics tool in 36 hours. Their “constraint-first” approach, shaped by MBET’s focus on rapid prototyping, customer discovery, and problem-driven design, allowed them to deliver the only live product in the competition: the Zero-Waste Dashboard. The tool provides instant transaction processing, customer segmentation, product insights, and actionable recommendations that small retailers can implement immediately. Their win highlights how MBET equips students to build fast, validate assumptions, and create real-world impact. The team is now exploring opportunities to extend the platform to other retailers seeking simple, data-driven solutions.

The Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business is set to host the Problem Lab’s Problem Pitch Fall 2025 Competition Finals, where student teams will demonstrate the depth of their research into important real-world problems.

Sponsored by Quantum Valley Investments®, the competition awards $7,500 to the team that shows the strongest understanding of the problem they aim to solve.

This year’s finalists represent a wide range of challenges and innovative thinking, supported by a panel of accomplished judges from the entrepreneurial ecosystem.