Teams from Waterloo Engineering swept the four winning spots at the Winter 2021 Concept $5K pitch competition held live, but virtually, this week.
Each of the teams – AquaSensing, Arbitrium, Scribenote and UWTensil – took home $5,000 after rising to the top of a field of more than 120 ideas submitted for the thrice-yearly event.
AquaSensing, which designs battery-free water leak detection systems, was represented by Nathan Johnson, Connor Al-Joundi, Kushant Patel and Jarren Teo, all master’s students in mechanical and mechatronics engineering.
Arbitrium, a platform to help organizations make unbiased group decisions involving multiple stakeholders, featured Ahmed Hamodi, a fourth-year software engineering student, and Greg Maxin, a fourth-year computer science student.
Making biodegradable cutlery
Scribenote, which automates medical documentation for doctors, nurses and veterinarians, is comprised of fourth-year nanotechnology engineering students Ryan Gallagher, Alina Pavel, Mohamed El-Naggar and Hashem Al Momani.
UWTensil, which has developed a novel material for cheap, biodegradable cutlery, is made up of Nishita Saha, Minh Trinh, Gavin Lee and Andy Yang, all fourth-year chemical engineering classmates.
Eight of 10 teams in the finals have Waterloo Engineering connections. The other four are Scena360, Maesos, Emre and ottofollo.
Concept is an experiential entrepreneurship and pre-incubator program at the University of Waterloo. It is provided by Velocity, an incubator for early stage, pre-seed startup companies.