From gamifying physiotherapy to optimizing labs across Canada, the Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre (DDQIC) summer pitch competition showcased emerging entrepreneurial brilliance on Aug. 14.
For 12 years, DDQIC has produced changemakers by encouraging and supporting their entrepreneurial ventures through pitch competitions, as well as incubators, workshops, programs, and courses. Held in the Mitchell Hall atrium, seven teams presented their projects to a panel of three judges, including the Chief Executive Officer at Kingston Economic Development Donna Gillespie, Co-Founder and President of Juniper Creates, Nikita Kopotun, Sci ’16, and, Co-founder and former Chief Operating Officer of Iris Technologies Inc., Conor Ross, Sci ’16.
After giving a five-minute pitch, judges posed questions to the team, allowing the emerging entrepreneurs to identify areas of concern and improve their innovations. Winning teams received a piece of the $50,000 prize fund, donated by the Dunin and Deshpande families, Smith Engineering, and the Faculty of Arts and Science.
Judges selected winners based on the team’s commitment to their project, the positive social effect the innovation will have on its intended target, and the amount of progress the group had made over the summer, Gregory Bavington, executive director of DDQIC, explained in an interview with The Journal.
The Monarch Informatics team, comprised of four Queen’s students, won $20,000. Theo Lemay, Sci ’25, Azeem Khan, Comp ’24, Marcus Wright-Smith, Comm ’24, and Jasmine Wu, ArtSci ’25 are optimizing clinical laboratories across Canada, helping them collect more data, focus on quality control, and improve efficiency.
“[Monarch Informatics] is providing important metrics and dashboards to management [in clinical laboratories]. They’re providing real-time monitoring of what’s going on in the labs like the contamination rate of samples and how long it takes to get a sample through the lab,” Bavington said.
Another team, Local Reach, secured $10,000 to help restaurants and bars monetize their untapped, recurring TV commercial breaks. Vulnscanner AI, providing an affordable, user-friendly website security platform to businesses, and EcoSafeSense, delivering real-time air quality data to customers, both received $5,000.
Other participating teams include Solace Mobility who “gamified physiotherapy,” Bavington explained. The Solace Mobility team, comprised of Sarah Lacy, Comm ’26, Maxwell Clark, Sci ’24, and two University of Toronto students, Annelies Henckel and Molly Long, created motion-tracking technology to monitor users’ physiotherapy exercises. If users complete their exercises, the technology provides them with words of encouragement and metrics to sustain their progress.
While Solace Mobility entered the competition with the possibility of securing funding, money is just one part of the experience, Bavington explained. Before the pitch competition, teams spent their summer in the Queen’s Innovation Centre Summer Initiative (QICSI) building their business venture.
Summer initiative participants shift their mindset and career ambitions in a more innovative and entrepreneurial direction, going on to start or continue ventures and work at start-up companies, Bavington said. A former student and current program coach at DDQIC, Enoch Muwanguzi, recipient of the Jim Leech Mastercard Foundation Fellowship on Entrepreneurship, was at the pitch competition as a guest speaker.
He presented his innovation, Ugabrush, a shoe brush used by school children in Uganda.
“[Muwanguzi] is a great example of what we love to see,” Bavington said. “He had this idea [to address] a very localized problem. […] Ugandan schoolchildren have to wear leather shoes to school. The streets are dusty and muddy, and the kids are constantly shining their shoes.”
An embodiment of innovation, Muwanguzi told audiences shoe brushes are typically made from horsehair, but Uganda doesn’t have horses. So, he used cow-tail hair instead. Muwanguzi is in the process of expanding his business, hiring workers, and buying new machinery.
An audience member was so impressed with his pitch, they wrote him a $5,000 cheque right then and there, Bavington recounted. Students can also bring their innovative ideas to DDQIC’s doorstep in Mitchell Hall.
“Just come and see us. Everybody is welcome through the front door and welcome to avail themselves of the resources that we have,” Bavington said.
Bavington encourages students who want to follow in the footsteps of DDQIC alumni to take the Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Creativity program plan, and join clubs like Enactus Queen’s, creating innovative and self-sustaining projects that advance the economic, social, and environmental health of communities around the world.
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DDQIC, innovation, pitch competition
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