The Department of Systems Design Engineering is hosting Hemdeep Patel, a gemologist turned co-founder of a microfluid 3D printing technology company. Hemdeep will share his experience launching entrepreneurial ventures and the skills required to commercialize an idea.
Hemdeep Patel earned a Bachelor's degree in Science, majoring in Physics and Astronomy, from U of T in 1994. In the same year, he also attained a Graduate Gemologist degree from the Gemological Institute of America. Later that year, Hemdeep joined his family's gemstone wholesale business and expanded it to include diamond wholesaling in 1995. This venture necessitated extensive travel to Asia, South America, and Africa for sourcing rough and cut inventory, while concurrently establishing effective marketing and sales strategies for wholesale operations throughout Canada. These experiences laid a solid foundation for further business development.
In 2001, Hemdeep co-founded an advanced gemological laboratory in India, which was followed by the establishment of another lab in Thailand, in 2004.
In 2009, Hemdeep ventured into the realm of 3D technology by co-founding Creative CADworks. This company provided 3D CAD services and 3D printing solutions to a wide range of users across Canada. Building on this success, he co-founded ResinWorks3D in 2015, focusing on the formulation and manufacturing of 3D photopolymers. This business catered to various industries, including biotech, dental, and jewelry.
Later that year, Hemdeep co-founded CADworks3D, an innovative venture providing tailored 3D printer solutions for the microfluidic community. The primary goal was to address a wide range of applications, such as lab-on-a-chip and organ-on-a-chip technologies.
Creative CADworks achieved significant milestones, including the successful launch of the ProFluidics 285D 3D printer in 2022—a cutting-edge platform designed specifically for the microfluidic industry. The company's advanced technologies has garnered them clients from global universities and research teams, including Cambridge University, Oxford University, Stanford, UCLA, Duke and McGill University. Moreover, their technology has gained traction among leading pharmaceutical companies such as Genentech, Abbott labs, Roche, and Thermo Scientific, as well as governmental agencies such as the Canada Nuclear Agency, FDA, US Department of Defense, and NIH.
In the upcoming years, the company intends to further grow and develop new technologies in micro printing and biocompatible photopolymers.