Students make their mark at OCE Discovery 2010
Ryerson students Jason Desouza-Coelho, Sammy Diab, Horatio Xavier and Colin Parrish accept their first-place prize at Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery 2010 for their project on harnessing power from walking. From left: Colin Andersen, president and CEO, Ontario Power Authority; John Milloy, minister of training, colleges and universities and minister of research and innovation; Jason Desouza-Coelho; Sammy Diab; Tom Corr, OCE president and CEO; Horatio Xavier; and Colin Parrish.
Four Ryerson students have given a whole new meaning to the term power walking.
Mechanical engineering students Jason Desouza-Coelho, Sammy Diab, Colin Parrish and Horatio Xavier have created a shoe-embedded Power Harvesting System that derives energy from an external source – in this, the simple act of walking – to be used for powering low-energy electronics such as cell phones. A video of their invention can be seen here.
Their bright idea won first place, and $2,500 for each of them, in a student oral competition at the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) Discovery 2010 this week. The annual conference in Toronto brings together the who’s who of the innovation world, attracting more than 2,000 business leaders, investors, entrepreneurs, scientists, students and researchers.
Graduate student Michael Dick and fourth-year radio and television arts student Elaine S. Wong also fared well in the video competition, winning second place for their video on HD Collaborative Design Tools. The duo received $1,500 each.
Ryerson undergraduate, graduate students, alumni and faculty were front and centre at OCE Discovery 10. Projects from the Digital Media Zone (DMZ) such as mobile and Internet applications, and sustainability initiatives involving green technology were featured. As well as robotics, new methods for biomedical ultrasound and 3-D multimedia processing were also on display.
Conference veteran and Ryerson PhD candidate Hossein Rahnama, who has an impressive record of developing innovative ideas, has attended OCE Discovery for the past three years. He says Ryerson students receive encouragement and support to explore their creative vision.
"Research at Ryerson is so unique because we believe in integrated, multi-disciplinary work. The DMZ allows undergraduate and graduate students to test their ideas and create projects that provide solutions for today's world. Professors play an important role too in giving students the freedom to develop themselves personally – a key aspect in innovation," Rahnama said.