2026 Award Recipient and Finalists

Jarett Dewbury, BASc '26, biomedical engineering

Jarett Dewbury, the 2026 recipient of the Pearl Sullivan Emerging Global Leaders Award, has built an exceptional record of leadership, research and community building in engineering and AI. As a Biomedical Engineering student with a specialization in Medical Artificial Intelligence, he has spent his undergraduate years working to make advanced AI accessible, both in healthcare and within the student community at Waterloo.

As co-founder of WAT.ai, the University of Waterloo's AI Engineering Design Team, Jarett helped grow a community of more than 800 members, launching more than 40 collaborative projects and 10 publications. His research has taken him to MIT, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he has worked on AI diagnostics for resource-limited clinical settings. This work earned him a first-author publication at ICLR and the 2025 Faculty of Engineering Co-op Student of the Year Award.

Jarett plans to pursue a PhD and ultimately found a company focused on AI diagnostics for underserved health systems globally. He also intends to establish an international research scholarship supporting Waterloo undergraduates who present work at conferences abroad, removing the financial barriers he himself has navigated throughout his career.

Nevedhaa Ayyappan, BASc '26, systems design engineering

Nevedhaa Ayyappan is a Systems Design Engineering student who has been a central organizing force behind Socratica, one of Canada's most recognized grassroots maker communities. As Symposium Co-Chair and Lead Organizer, she has helped build an event that brought together thousands of attendees from five continents, raised more than $350,000 in organizational funding and established Socratica nodes in more than 60 cities worldwide.

Nevedhaa's leadership extends well beyond logistics. She has cultivated partnerships with organizations including Anthropic, Shopify, Communitech and Kleiner Perkins, and has consulted for institutions ranging from Humber College to the Government of Barbados on innovation ecosystem strategy. Her work has been recognized nationally, including through the William A. Downe Scholarship of Excellence and the Leadership in Human Rights and Social Justice Achievement Award from York Regional Police.

Looking ahead, Nevedhaa plans to research and shape Canadian policy infrastructure through Project 2035, a public database mapping every policy idea and recommendation relevant to Canada's innovation ecosystem, aimed at surfacing why builder-focused initiatives stall and what it will take to change that.

Binalpreet Kalra, BASc '26, biomedical engineering

Binalpreet Kalra is a Biomedical Engineering student whose path through Waterloo has been shaped by a conviction that people do their best work when they feel empowered to create. After building a strong foundation in software and hardware through roles at UW Blueprint, Hack the North and the Living Architecture Systems Group, she turned that belief into action by co-founding PRISM Collective, Waterloo's first student-run creative-tech design team. PRISM was built on the recognition that many engineering students are also artists and storytellers, but lack spaces to bring those identities together.

In under a year, PRISM grew to more than 600 community members working on more than ten interdisciplinary projects, with workshops across Waterloo, Toronto and Montreal. The collective secured $15,000 in funding for Rhythms of Chaos, a large-scale installation selected for the Lumière festival at Ontario Place's Trillium Park. Binal also contributed to Nucleate Dojo's DojoGrants program, helping it grow from a $25,000 pilot to more than $150,000 in undergraduate research funding.

After graduating, Binal plans to move to Toronto to continue growing PRISM and pursue formal training in art and design. Her longer-term goal is to open her own studio, developing open-source creative-tech tools and building spaces where engineering is imaginative, interdisciplinary and deeply human.

Mulei Mao, BASc '26, mechatronics engineering

Mulei Mao is a Mechatronics Engineering student whose work spans sustainable food innovation, peer mentorship and community building within Waterloo Engineering. Starting with research on duckweed-based biofuels through the GreenHouse Social Impact Incubator, he pivoted to food applications when he identified a more immediate opportunity, ultimately creating PopTein, a plant-based protein popcorn snack that won the Velocity Cornerstone Make a Sale Award.

As President of Tron Mentor Chats, Mulei helped establish more than 100 mentorship pairings between upper- and lower-year Mechatronics students, with deliberate attention to supporting students from underrepresented backgrounds. He has also served as a Mechatronics Executive Ambassador and GreenHouse Student Ambassador, representing the Faculty of Engineering at open houses, hackathons and community events, and mentoring students one-on-one throughout his degree.

After graduation, Mulei plans to continue developing his capstone smart farm project to produce high-quality Wolffia duckweed protein, with the long-term goal of delivering accessible, plant-based nutrition through meal replacements for students and busy professionals.

Olivia Zheng, BASc '26, mechatronics engineering

Olivia Zheng is a Mechatronics Engineering student whose work spans hardware research, community building and human augmentation technology. She founded PRISM Collective in late 2024 to bridge art and technology at Waterloo, a space that hadn't previously existed. In under a year, PRISM supported more than 15 member-led projects and presented work to more than 3,000 people, including at the Lumière Festival in Toronto and a researcher-creative exhibition in San Francisco.

Alongside PRISM, Olivia has conducted research at the MIT Media Lab, the University of Toronto, the EPFL CREATE Lab and the Augmentation Lab at MIT, contributing to work in wearable devices, neural implants and neurosurgical robotics. She has also held industry roles at Apple, Fleet Robotics and Impossible Metals, and has presented her research at the Augmentation Summit at MIT Media Lab.

After graduating, Olivia plans to continue advancing neural and assistive health technologies through early-stage research and startup work, while expanding PRISM and similar communities that explore how emerging technologies shape identity, accessibility and human experience.