Entrepreneurship

Vitamin D, known as the “sunshine vitamin,” is essential to human health and now a team of Waterloo entrepreneurs want to give you a way to test for it in the comfort of your home.

Vitameter, a startup founded by three University of Waterloo nanotechnology engineering students, is developing an at-home testing device that will give you results in minutes rather than going to a lab and waiting days.

Skin-friendly markers that use ultraviolet-responsive ink to signal when it’s time to reapply sunscreen earned University of Waterloo startup Suncayr a runner-up finish in a prestigious international design competition.

What would it be worth to be able to predict how a new movie will do at the box office before it’s ever released?

Waterloo math grad Jack Zhang says the information is gold for the film industry so he founded a startup, called BoxOfficePrediction. His company is based on a mathematical model he created that predicts the minimum amount of revenue a movie will generate in the first week it’s released.

Suncayr, a company formed by nanotechnology engineering students in Waterloo’s Velocity program was announced as an international runner up in James Dyson Awards on Thursday. The James Dyson Award, founded by the British industrial designer and inventor of the Dyson bagless vacuum, runs in 18 countries.

While working at a co-op job in Hong Kong, Waterloo student Robert Beamish’s boss asked him to organize a business pitch competition in Beijing.

Then she told Beamish he would be the first presenter to make a pitch.

“It was the push I needed,” says Beamish, a fourth-year economics and business student in the Faculty of Arts.

The University of Waterloo’s Board of Governors has approved the construction of a new $88-million Engineering 7 (E7) building.

The 230,000-square-foot, seven-storey building will house Waterloo Engineering’s ongoing transformation of how it delivers education to students.

Since his retirement in 2013 from the Biology Department at the University of Waterloo, Owen Ward, professor emeritus in the Faculty of Science, has lost none of his passion for turning things people don’t want into things they do.

He has his own laboratory in Waterloo and throws the same urgent energy into Lystek International Inc., the company he started in 2000 to make better use of sewage sludge. 

Youssef Helwa wants to remove the fear factor from those stressful weeks after a patient undergoes surgery.

To help prevent post-operative complications, he and a team of University of Waterloo entrepreneurs are developing a tiny biosensor that would be left inside the body to alert doctors to bleeding or infection.

In September, Velocity, an entrepreneurship initiative from the University of Waterloo, welcomed 29 new companies to its Velocity Garage, Velocity Foundry and Velocity Science programs.

These new startups will join 25 existing companies in an engaging community that fosters entrepreneurship while helping to turn ideas into sustainable businesses. Velocity focuses on peer mentorship, resource access and expert guidance for new businesses.

A Waterloo student has founded a company that is tackling every job-seekers Catch-22: employers want experience but you need a job first to get that experience.

Melissa Morgan, a Global Business and Digital Arts (GBDA) student co-founded uIntuition as a way for post-secondary students to build a portfolio, network and generate income while employers get professional work for a competitive price.