Success for students at Canadian Engineering Competition

Waterloo Engineering student teams excelled at the 2024 Canadian Engineering Competition. Each year the competition (which started in Waterloo in 1985) brings together the brightest engineering students from across the country to compete in eight different competition categories. To qualify for CEC, students must first win their local university’s engineering competition, followed by a top placement at a regional competition.

At the Ontario Engineering Competition five teams from Waterloo achieved 1^st or 2^nd place.

Kelsey Zhu and Muntaqim Rahman, competing as team Jaguar, won the Debate competition. Topics debated by the pair included “Should we develop lethal autonomous robots” and “Should we regret the commercialization of space research.”

Cael Johnston, Alexandre Roman, Milind Jain and Jillian Lee came first in the Consulting category. The team was tasked with creating an in-depth analytical solution for relocating an underground physics lab.

The Senior Design category challenges competitors to create a mechatronics system to solve a problem. Phoebe Luo, Andy Meng, Matthew Ortlieb, Alyzen Jeraj were asked to design a robot that could navigate its environment, picking up and dropping -off paper clips. Their robot completed the challenge in record time, earning the team first place.

Dea Gjini, Aliya Sallam, Sarah Schneider and Ria Goros competed in Innovative Design. This competition category asks teams to create new and innovative designs that address a void in society. The Waterloo group achieved second place with their non-invasive, saliva-based alternative to blood sampling based reproductive hormone testing.

Finally, Jane Babiak-Abray, Yu Ran Wang, Daniel Rolinsky, Julian Baxendale represented Waterloo in the Junior Design category. They placed second for a light weight and functional glider and launcher design, put together in only seven hours.

The success of the five teams at the Ontario Engineering Competition is a testament to the hard work, creativity and expertise of all of the students involved. This achievement was reinforced at the national competition held at the University of Calgary. Four teams placed in the top three in their categories, including 1^st place for Innovative Design, 2^nd place for Senior Design, and 3^rd places for Junior Design and Debate.