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Entrepreneurs excel at FEAS

Our business-boosting resources and programs give students an edge
May 06, 2019

At FEAS, we help students get set for entrepreneurial success. Our professors – many of whom are entrepreneurs themselves – encourage students to take their ideas and turn them into viable businesses. Our Faculty’s Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CEIE) takes them a step further, by providing students with mentorship and resources, including the Norman Esch Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship Awards, incubation via iBoost, (external link)  and a master of engineering innovation and entrepreneurship (MEIE) degree. Discover how our students and alum have made the most of these opportunities at FEAS and whose ideas are positioned to become viable commercial ventures.

Bolis Ibrahim

Argentum Electronics

Bolis Ibrahim, Electrical Engineering ’19, is the founder and CEO of Argentum Electronics (external link, opens in new window) . A Ryerson Clean Energy Zone company, Argentum Electronics has developed a new Power-over-Ethernet (POE) product that provides both a secure data connection and power to electrical devices through a single cable. Argentum's patent-pending technology enables more power to be delivered to devices, such as LED lighting, through POE. Ibrahim’s company won all three stages of the Esch Awards, was a gold medallist in the international startup category at BIXPO in Korea, and won $250,000 from the N11 Evolution tech startup competition.

Aly Burtch

uBioDiscovery

MEIE student Aly Burtch is the co-founder and managing director of uBioDiscovery, a startup focused on personalized gut-health solutions. uBioDiscovery recently received a $10,000 Artificial Intelligence Industry Partnership Fund, which is funded by the National Research Council Canada-Industry Research Assistance Program. In addition, Burtch has received $15,000 via DMZ Sandbox Student Grants, $8,000 via FEAS’s Esch Awards, in addition to support from the Kimel Family Campus-Linked Accelerator Fund. With this funding, uBioDiscovery plans to develop an AI tool that will help them group factors like age and disease with levels of specific gut bacteria allowing them to identify trends between microbiome profiles and lifestyle.

Wesley Kosiba

Liminal Power

Wesley Kosiba is the CEO and co-founder of Liminal Power, an urban technology company designing a prefabricated modular heating system to prevent ice formation on bridges. The technology would replace the use of road salt, which causes severe structural and environmental damage. An MEIE student, Kosiba and his team at Liminal Power won both Stage 1 and Stage 2 Esch Awards, as well as Stage 1 and Stage 2 DMZ Sandbox Student Grant Awards. Currently, Liminal Power is building its prototype.

Maleeha Alvi and Shaheryar Ahmad

Luup

FEAS mechanical engineering graduates Maleeha Alvi (’17) and Shaheryar Ahmad (’16) are the co-founders of Eatonomy. The duo, who found support and mentorship in Ryerson’s iBoost incubator, recently won $30,000 in funding for Luup (external link, opens in new window) , an app designed to provide businesses with immediate, direct-from-consumer feedback in return for rewards like concert tickets and cryptocurrency. The funding is from the SmartStart Seed Fund administered by Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) on behalf of the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario. Previously, Alvi won all three stages of FEAS’s Esch Awards, at a value of $38,000. Alvi and Ahmad are beta testing the app, with plans to introduce it to the world soon.