Born and raised in Calgary, Keith Cleland (MASc ‘22, chemical engineering) initially thought he would end up working in the oil industry. Interested in working for a sustainable future instead, Cleland spent his undergraduate degree researching a battery that would use a cheap and available resource — saltwater— to store renewable energy.
Cleland continued developing his technology as part of his master’s degree at Waterloo Engineering where he met Ellsworth Bell (MASc ‘21, chemical engineering), a classmate working in the same lab. Together, they founded Aqua-Cell Energy Inc. with plans to commercialize a saltwater battery.