Twelve teams of fourth-year engineering students at the University of Waterloo in Ontario were awarded more than $100,000 in funding on March 27, 2026, to help turn their classroom inventions into real-world products. The student teams participated in the annual Norman Esch Entrepreneurship Awards for Capstone Design, where they presented their work to industry judges after developing their concepts as part of their final-year graduation requirements.
The prize money was distributed among the teams, with six groups receiving $12,000 top prizes and six groups earning $5,000 second-place awards. An additional $4,500 was granted to a team called Division 5 as a People’s Choice Award. These finalists were selected from a pool of more than 350 projects created by over 1,500 students at the university’s recent design showcase.
Among the top winners were two projects with practical applications in health and public safety. A team called CoolFlash designed a wearable device that provides targeted cooling to help women manage menopausal hot flashes, a condition that affects 85 per cent of women for an average of 11 years. Meanwhile, Division 5 created an artificial intelligence tool that automatically transcribes police body camera footage and identifies personal information for redaction. This technology reduces a manual process that typically takes six hours per hour of footage down to a near-instant task.
The competition is supported by the Norman Esch Foundation, which was established in 2004 to help students apply engineering sciences to solve real-world problems. The foundation has backed the university’s entrepreneurship efforts since 2014. The initiative is part of a broader culture of innovation at the university, which is ranked first in Canada for producing venture-backed entrepreneurs.
The annual competition has a history of helping students launch successful businesses. Previous participants have gone on to create notable companies, including the wearable technology firm Thalmic Labs, the smartwatch manufacturer Pebble, the automated delivery company BufferBox, and the performance apparel maker Athos.
