June 13, 2014
Waterloo student graduates with a degree - and a successful startup
Engineering grad leads Petro-Predict, a data analytics startup for the oil and gas industry
Dominic Toselli graduates this week with a mechanical engineering degree and numerous prestigious awards for PetroPredict, a startup that’s garnering considerable investor attention.
The company he co-founded with Andrew Andrade, a second-year Waterloo mechatronics engineering student, uses data analytics to find potential oil and gas leaks that may go undetected for years.
Last month, the company won a pair of top awards at the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery Conference, including the inaugural David McFadden Energy Entrepreneur Challenge and the Elevator Pitch competition. It has also captured several major awards from Velocity, the University’s startup incubator.
Dominic Toselli speaking at at the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery Conference.
PetroPredict is also one of the reasons Toselli was named this spring as one of Maclean’s magazine’s Future Leaders under 25.
Co-op term in Silicon Valley
Toselli chose Waterloo Engineering for its co-op program and the opportunities it provides, especially in Silicon Valley where he spent a work term at Apple. While there, he developed a mechanism that helped reduce damage to an iPhone when it hits the ground. Toselli’s invention so impressed Steve Zadesky, vice-president of iPod/iPhone, that a patent for it was recently published.
“Apple gave me an incredible amount of freedom,” says Toselli. “It was the first job that I’ve had the freedom to work the amount I wanted to and on the projects I wanted to work on.”
Top engineering co-op student of the year
During another co-op term at Shell, he came up with a solution to a heat exchanger problem that has resulted in the company saving $1 million a year and the University of Waterloo honouring him as engineering’s top co-op student for 2012. His work with Shell and Cenovus, another oil sands firm, provided him with the background to start PetroPredict.
Besides working on his startup and finishing his engineering degree, Toselli managed to find the time to start two clubs. An avid squash player, he launched the Waterloo Engineering squash club as well as the University of Waterloo Italian Club to encourage students to think about travelling abroad to complete a semester or a year.
When it comes to finding the time to tick off everything on his to do list, Toselli has a simple answer: “I haven’t slept a lot in the past year.”
