Three chemical engineering students win Waterloo’s first ARC pitch competition

Three chemical engineering graduate students won the inaugural pitch competition of the Academy of Research Commercialization (ARC). The new program is run by Engineering and Conrad together, with help from Velocity and WatCo, the Waterloo Commercialization Office, and it prepares PhD students to turn deep-tech research into ventures.

Drew Davidson’s ArcticEdge Technologies is making a nanotechnology moisture barrier for firefighting gear to replace PFAS, which has been identified as carcinogenic. He was inspired by his mother, Kelley Willemze, a Cambridge firefighter for more than 30 years. Batches are going to clients for evaluation, including gear maker LION and Wuxly, which supplies cold weather gear to the Canadian military.

Chuchi Chen and Ellie Zarnke pitched Aqualis Bio, a probiotic for salmon feed. Their engineered microbes secrete astaxanthin, the additive that gives farmed salmon their pink colour, and they say it could cost $1500 against a current range of $2000 to $7000. They have filed provisional IP and confirmed the function at lab scale.

Bahareh Arab’s Porphyrion relies on engineered microbes and precision fermentation to make natural colours that can stand in for the synthetic dyes found in everyday products.