Undergrads win 9 top awards in provincial contest

Monday, February 7, 2022

Waterloo students had a strong showing at this year’s remote Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC) with 6 teams moving on to next month's national contest.

Hosted by the University of Toronto, undergraduate engineering students won nine of the top prizes awarded. The first and second-place teams in their categories will compete in the Canadian Engineering Competition to be held online by the University of New Brunswick March 11 to 13.   

First place in the Junior Design category was won by mechatronics engineering students Simon Gorbet, Alyzen Jeraj, Phoebe Luo and Andy Meng. Another Waterloo team comprised of mechanical and mechatronics engineering students Shivam Abhi, Jakeb Chouinard, Milind Jain and Malcolm Park placed second in the same category.

Omar Atwa and Omkaar Kamath, both management engineering students, took first prize in the Re-engineering competition.

Ontario Engineering Competiton logo

Second place in Innovative Design went to Cesar Genatios, Ankit Jain, Simona Rocco and Laura Zhukas, all fourth-year biomedical engineering students.

A second-place finish was also awarded in the Programming category to software engineering students Jomills Jose Anand, Viraj Rahul Mehta, Ekanshh Danda Praveen and Rohit Bharadwaj Ramesh.

Sean Ashley and Anson Yu, both systems design engineering students, captured second in Parliamentary Debate.

Third place was awarded to students Joanna Diao, Osose Itua, Lichen Ma and Jillian Wong in Programming; David Burtenshaw, Angela Chen, Rebecca Damsteegt, and Vicky Zhou in Consulting; and Neil Kaus and Ella Uppal in Debate.

Each year, over 300 engineering students from universities across Ontario compete in OEC, a three-day event. Participating teams must first win their institution’s qualifying competitions to take part in OEC.