MONTREAL, Sept. 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The 2018 Concordia University ENCS Entrepreneurship Award for Capstone Design in District 3 (D3) was awarded to Emily Minor, Jeremy Andrews and Michael MacDonald, a trio of Mechanical Engineering (BEng) students, for their projects revolving around CPU cooling, cycling for the physically disabled, navigation for the visually impaired, and water desalination. The award program, launched in 2017 in partnership with Montreal entrepreneurs, Stephane Manos and Ouissam Youssef, supports a final year engineering project that requires Engineer and Computer Science students to apply their knowledge and practical skills to create a mechanical device or product. Working in collaboration with Concordia’s District 3, students also learn entrepreneurial skills to further develop Capstone projects into viable businesses.
Andrews, MacDonald, and Minor were rewarded for their work to identify problems and market gaps in each of the four categories and their efforts to provide solutions in the form of marketable products. Starting from a problem statement, the winning team applied market research and their engineering know-how to determine whether the envisioned solutions were ultimately worth pursuing as a business. The team began studying, in order, the potential application of Free Piston Sterling Cooling (FPSC) technology to cool personal computers (CPUs); devices that would make bicycles more accessible to persons with physical disabilities; and technologies that would make it easier for visually impaired people to navigate their neighborhoods. After concluding that none of these three areas would offer a realistic opportunity to design marketable solutions with the resources available, the trio redirected their focus to water desalination at a small scale through the application of Vortex tube desalination and FPSC atmospheric water generation.
District 3 is a community dedicated to collaboration, innovation and entrepreneurship, located in a dynamic workspace on university grounds. The think tank empowers Concordia students, faculty, and alumni from various disciplines to collaborate on challenging real-world initiatives that transform bold ideas into tangible ventures for the betterment of society. District 3 strives to develop innovation and entrepreneurship skills, support product development and foster mentorship collaborations with experts and Concordia alumni.
This mission resonates profoundly with Manos and Youssef, who met while pursuing Engineering and Computer Science studies at Concordia and went on after graduation to start a multitude of international businesses. They are the founders of Valsoft, a company devoted to the acquisition and development of software businesses in niche vertical markets, and Valnet, one of the world’s largest publishers of lifestyle and entertainment websites. “Our entire business philosophy, regardless of the type of industry, is based on entrepreneurship,” stated Youssef. “The ENCS Entrepreneurship Award for Capstone Design in District 3 encourages students not only to take risks, but to do it rationally and to evaluate carefully how their knowledge can be applied to solve a problem before engaging resources to pursue a venture.”
“We remember our years at Concordia vividly, and our dreams and aspirations when we started our first business,” added Manos. “Funding the ENCS Award is our way of supporting future engineers who are driven to launch ventures that can make a difference in the lives of people. We were especially enthusiastic about having a young woman in the winning team. We hope that her success and dedication will be a lightning rod to inspire other women to enter the field of engineering and to start their own technology-driven ventures. The industry needs many more.”
The $10,000 annual ENCS Award is available to student team members enrolled in any department within the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science’s third-year Junior Capstone Design Project.
Sources: Valsoft Corporation, Concordia University
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