Entrepreneurship

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.

Honourable Reza Moridi, Ontario’s Minister of Research and Innovation, today announced a $3.3-million grant to be shared by the two universities in a partnership with Communitech as part of the Government of Ontario’s campus-linked accelerators program (CLA).

The grant is part of the $20 million CLA introduced as a key part of the Government of Ontario’s Youth Jobs Strategy. The program is managed provincially by Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE).

The Velocity Foundry—the University of Waterloo's new incubator space for hardware, materials and life sciences startup companies—will officially open this Friday, and members of the media are invited to tour the home of what could be the next great Canadian entrepreneurship story.

The media are invited to join representatives from the federal and provincial governments and the University of Waterloo for the grand opening. Journalists are welcome to tour the space and speak to representatives of the startup companies in attendance.