Hosted annually at the University of Waterloo, the Fusion Conference brings together science, business, and technology to inspire innovative thinking.
This year’s theme, Bridging the Health Gap, challenged students to develop creative, real-world solutions through a case competition. Congratulations to Murto Hilali, Kiranjot Sidhu, Roma Shangari, Iñigo Olalia, and Yubin Im, who won Most Innovative Solution for their pitch: an early-detection breathalyzer device designed for rapid lung cancer screening.
Read this thoughtful reflection on how Murto and the team spent the day:
The Fusion Conference 2025 was my first case competition (ever). Please don’t make my mistake and wait until your final term to participate. You might miss out on the chance to join an exceptional team, turn a blank slide deck into a health tech pitch in under an hour, and propose an idea to a panel of industry experts and win, while you’re at it. Want proof? Here’s my experience at Fusion this year!
The Fusion Conference team did an excellent job handling arrival and registration. It was an incredibly diverse mix of attendees from accounting, science, and business. The morning began with a keynote speaker from the University of Waterloo alumni, Gavin Duggan, a senior engineer at Google who previously worked at Alphabet’s moonshot factory, X.
The keynote was a goldmine for anyone interested in health tech innovation and business. His insights were vital because the day’s topic was improving cancer services in Ontario. With less than two hours on the clock, we had to understand the issue, diagnose the problem with current solutions, propose new solutions, and pitch our ideas to the judges.
It was 12:15. We had landed on our idea twenty minutes earlier, and we had twenty minutes left to make it look presentable. Every new study we dug up forced us to pivot. Strategy shifted, slides were rewritten, and messaging was reworked on the fly. We split up, three of us ran the pitch while two worked on the deck. We paced, practiced, and stitched it all together as the timer ticked down. It was easily the most stressful Saturday of my life and certainly one of the most fun.
We submitted the deck with seconds to spare. Our first pitch was chaotic and intense, but once it was over, we finally got to exhale and enjoy the lunch we’d been too stressed to think about. As we regrouped, we heard what the other teams had built: bioengineered sensors, AI tools for detecting carcinogens, and technologies so novel I hadn’t even heard of them before. Their creativity made the whole experience feel even more electric.
Then came the announcements of the six finalists, and our team was announced to move forward in the competition. First, we celebrated, then we started to panic. We had under an hour to expand the pitch, rebuild the slides, and prep for questions from a panel with decades of experience. With two hours of ‘experience’ under our belt, we got to work.
We pitched last, after five other incredibly innovative ideas, including drone delivery networks, AI for clinical trials, and even whale-protein research. Of course, we were nervous, but we had figured out our workflow and learned to trust each other; we were running like a well-oiled machine.
Then came the final announcement. We sat there trying to keep it together while the judges moved through the awards. When they reached Most Innovative Solution, they started describing the winning idea — the challenge it tackled, the angle we took, even the last-minute twist we added that morning. With each detail, we exchanged quick looks. It sounded unmistakably like ours, and then they confirmed it; it was our project.
For a moment, we just froze, making sure we’d heard correctly. Then the realization sank in; all the rushing, pivoting, and stress from the morning had actually paid off. We couldn’t help smiling at each other — we’d won!
Winning a prize at Fusion was a highlight, but there were some takeaways from the day that I think any attendee can agree with:
- You can get a ridiculous amount of work done in a few hours when you’re thrown into a room full of smart, ambitious people and tasked with solving a big problem.
- The best ideas come from collaboration. Sharing half-formed thoughts and letting others build on them is what made our pitch work.
- Events like this are as much about the people as the problem. Some conversations lasted two minutes; others turned into exchanges I'm still following up on. If you want to meet more people in your program or industry, join a case competition like this one.
My only regret? Not joining sooner. A huge thanks to the Fusion team for putting on a great conference, and of course, my incredible team members, Kiranjot, Roma, Inigo, and Yubin.