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A student project that transformed how the Zekelman School of Business plans its semesters was the winning entry Friday in St. Clair College’s annual Ford Innovation Showcase.
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Mohammad Vaqqas won first place, and $2,500 from Ford Motor Co., for his Semester Loading Tool.
“You choose a program and it lists out all the programs and automatically chooses the professors,” said Vaqqas, a graduating student in the Data Analytics program. “They were creating 50 Excel sheets to do that, over four weeks. Now they can just do it within a few minutes. They’re actually using it in the Zekelman School of Business.”
Ten student teams had the chance to present innovative projects they’ve been working on through the year, or year-end capstone projects, to “high-level” industry executives.
Each student team had five minutes to make their presentations, followed by three-to five-minute question and answer periods. More than $10,000 in cash and prizes were up for grabs.
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The event, open to students from all programs, also included speed mentoring sessions and networking opportunities.
Other winners included:
- $500 Air Canada Take Flight Award to Jamie Vallance, an Interior Design student, for her Mobile Trailer Boutique.
- $500 Enwin Future Leaders Award to Bethany D’Alimonte, a Business Marketing student, for her Enactus project interACT.
- $750 Alumni Saints Nation Award to Robert Bloomfield, a Business Marketing student, for his project EAST
- $1,000 AIS Agile Award for Excellence in Automation to Deual Patel and Yash Soni, students in Robotics, for their Autonomous Guided Vehicle and UR Robotic Arm.
- $1,750 Reko Innovation Showcase Award to Viral Makwana, a Robotics student, for his Autonomous Mushroom Harvesting project.
- $2,000 Ford Innovation Showcase Award to Trevor Ramieri and Brianna Gaylord, Landscape-Horticulture students, for their Enactus project transPLANT.
