Jeremy Wang (PhD '23, mechanical and mechatronics engineering) realized that Northern Communities lack access to commercial airlines and airports due to limited infrastructure, so he set out to co-found Ribbit—a pilotless fixed-wing aircraft company.
Matthew Gordon (BASc '26, mechanical engineering) has made The Logic's annual list, which highlights the top innovators among graduating students across Canada.
At the annual Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineers (CSME) conference, a capstone project team received national recognition for developing a robot that helps train professional volleyball players and teams. The robot delivers repeatable, game-like sets, allowing athletes to practice without relying on another player to assist with training.
Ryan Gariepy (BASc '09, mechatronics engineering, MASc '12, mechanical engineering*) and his co-founders, who are also all mechatronics alumni, established Clearpath Robotics in 2009 at a time when the robotics industry in Canada was still finding its footing, and it wasn't common to see Canadian startups taking technology that involved physical robots from the lab to the global market. Now that's changed, and Gariepy is happy to see it.
A newly minted mechanical engineering alum has received three awards for his academic excellence.
Rotostitch, founded in 2025, is striving to make a sustainable impact on the apparel industry with garment construction. The company was co-founded by Waterloo Engineering alum Leah McClure (BASc ’24, mechanical engineering) and Anson Tsang.
Vena Medical, a company born out of a fourth-year Capstone Design project and now a Velocity Health company, just became one of the first recipients of Ontario’s new Life Sciences Scale-Up Fund (LSSUF). The LSSUF is part of the Government of Ontario’s larger efforts to support medical-based companies within the province. The fund’s goal is to help advance innovation and attract more interest and investment into the field.
Co-founded by mechatronics alum, Sam Dugan (BASc ‘22), Upside Robotics is transforming agriculture through sustainable automation. The company has invented robots that apply fertilizers precisely where crops need them and allow farmers to monitor fields and track crop health, remotely and efficiently.
Kitchener-based health-technology company Vena Medical started as a fourth-year design project by Michael Phillips and Phillip Cooper (both BASc ‘18, mechanical engineering) in Waterloo Engineering and has only continued to grow since then.
Toronto-based construction company, Brickeye, was founded in 2014 by Waterloo MME alumni Richard Liang (BASc ’12, MASc ’14), Hamid Alemohammad (PhD ’10), Amir Azhari (PhD ’17), and Alex Fuentes (BASc ’00).