Entrepreneurs with strong ties to Waterloo Engineering claimed both $25,000 awards handed out this week by a provincial organization dedicated to commercializing innovation.
Abdul Rehman, who is CEO of SSIMWAVE Inc. and earned a PhD in electrical engineering at Waterloo, won the Martin Walmsley Award for Entrepreneurship at the annual meeting of the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) in Toronto.
Rehman co-founded SSIMWAVE with Zhou Wang, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Waterloo, and Kai Zeng, a post-doctoral fellow who also earned his PhD at Waterloo.
Matt Rendall, left, and Ryan Gariepy of Clearpath Robotics.
The company’s products help customers in the media and entertainment industries measure, manage and optimize video quality. Wang won a television Emmy Award in 2015 as co-inventor of the algorithm at the core of its technology.
Matt Rendall, CEO of Clearpath Robotics, and Simon Drexler, director of industrial solutions at OTTO Motors, a division of Clearpath, were jointly given the Mind-to-Market Award.
Based in Kitchener, Clearpath was started in 2009 by Rendall and fellow Waterloo mechatronics engineering graduates Ryan Gariepy, Patrick Morrison and Bryan Webb. Drexler joined the company in 2014 and has an undergraduate degree in systems design engineering from Waterloo.
OTTO produces self-driving vehicles designed to move materials in manufacturing plants and warehouses using advanced sensors and artificial intelligence.
Funded by the Ontario government, the OCE partners with industry to invest in the commercialization of innovations developed at the province’s universities, colleges and research hospitals.