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An Update From the SDZ

October 26, 2022

Check out what some of our startups have been up to!

Fibra (external link) 's founder, Parnian Majd (TMU alum), received the 2022 EY  Woman in Tech Award by NEXT Canada (external link) !

Biofect (external link)  (team: Louis Lo, John Abousawan*, Teshager Kefale, and Christian Delos Santos*) has had a great year. Not only were they accepted into one of Germany's top alternative protein incubators, ProVeg,  (external link) but they also won the top prize at their Pitch Competition. More recently,  they were accepted into CDL's (external link)  22/23 cohort for Ag-Tech!

*TMU alum

Hay Health (external link)  (founders: Caydie Van Brabant and Niels Vermeire) made it through to the Belgian finals of the Entrepreneurship World Cup (external link) , presented by VOKA!

New School Foods (external link)  (founder: Chris Bryson) were selected as a semi-finalist for the X-Prize's Feed the Next Billion competition (external link)  - a $15M competition!

Terraplant (external link)  (founder: Jonathan Lee) was accepted into CDL's Agricultural Innovation Stream (external link)  part of the 2022/2023 cohort!

Fall Programming at the SDZ

The [Bio]Makerspace Program

This pilot program brings together students in Science, Business, Nutrition, and Nursing to collaborate and tackle challenges based in either healthcare or food & beverage. Not only are students able to refine their expertise and more deeply explore industries they're interested in, but each student receives a stipend for their work and those with the right training get access to the SDZ's biology lab to create and test prototypes. This is a great opportunity for students to take leadership over their work!

Scientist2Entrepreneur (S2E)

This term, we launched our second cohort of S2E (external link) –a free program geared towards current/former grad students, post-docs, and other researchers. Through S2E, researchers without entrepreneurial experience (or even a startup idea) have the chance to explore entrepreneurship as a potential career path while practicing what it takes to turn research into a venture. 

This program was originally launched in Quebec (as QcSE) and expanded to the Atlantic provinces as well as Ontario (the Ontartio cohort is facilitated by the SDZ).

Start for Future (SFF)

SFF (led through SCE (external link) 's eBridge alliance in Germany) is an international network of university incubators and accelerators that work together to support entrepreneurship. The 25+ institutions involved–from Europe, North America, Asia–educate, incubate, and mentor student entrepreneurs.

This year, the SFF alliance won the Tripple E Awards (external link, opens in new window)  which is a global recognition of efforts to support entrepreneurship within higher education.

This is our 3rd year being part of the SFF network it has been amazing to see just a fraction of what international collaboration can help to accomplish! Through this program we onboarded two European startups, HayHealth (external link)  (from Belgium) and Evolve (from Bulgaria) and it has been so gratifying to support them on their journey.

 

If you're looking to ways to get involved, connect with us or our members, or have an idea for how we could support an initiative you're leading, feel free to reach out by sending us an email at discovery.zone@torontomu.ca