Students create own careers

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/07/2009 (6006 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CALGARY — At the age of 22, University of Calgary geomatics engineering undergraduate student Justin Waghray already has big plans to create his own job after forming a health technology company.

The inventive student, who is pursuing a biomedical specialization along with a double major in German, recently won the Student Technology Innovation Challenge in southern Alberta for developing a brain plug designed to reduce the risks when neurosurgeons have to drill a hole in a patients’ skull to alleviate a buildup of blood.

As part of the competition, he formed a company called Neurologic Medical Solutions with the $6,000 in grand prize seed money and legal services. In an uncertain labour environment, Waghray is a budding entrepreneur adamant about creating a job for himself.

“A lot of my friends in engineering who graduated this year are working in the field of oil and gas,” he says. “I think it’s good for Calgary to have a wider economy. A few (medical) devices won’t change that, but seeing the path that a lot of my friends took . . . I’d definitely like to avoid that path of getting a job.”

It’s that kind of entrepreneurial spirit and creative passion that events such as STIC, and the TEC VenturePrize in Student Business Plan Competition where Waghray earned another $2,000, are meant to recognize and encourage.

“Especially in this (labour) environment, this is a relatively safe environment to bounce ideas around,” says Becky Wong, manager of new company formation for University Technologies International, the technology commercialization and company incubation centre for the university and organizer of STIC.

“If they’re looking not to work for somebody else and be their own boss, with the prize money they can really start something,” she says, adding that all competitors receive valuable feedback to tweak their business plans. Most are pursuing their concepts.

The end result of this kind of competition is something intangible. “With entrepreneurship, you can’t really teach it,” says Wong. “The only way they can do it is by doing it.”

Darius Remesat, a chemical engineering student, is creating some new prospective career options after competing in the STIC and TEC competitions.

He works full-time in the oil and gas industry as he works toward his PhD part-time, but also sees potential future career directions through the formation of his company, based on a product he designed as part of his doctoral education.

“I wanted to leverage the knowledge gained from the PhD and turn it into a real product,” says Remesat. “I was using the PhD as a tool to vet out the concept and get the framework for the concept to turn it into a product.”

After five years of research, he developed a software tool for improving oil upgrading and refining performance and profitability, called HOOK for heavy oil-bitumen optimization key.

“If everything was ideal, I’d love to quit the day job and work on this full time,” says Remesat, “but it would be two or three years before you start making the same money I’m making at my current job.

“You’ve got to have the financial stability.”

Gord McKinlay’s STIC entry, which won in the TEC VenturePrize competition, was based on an idea he developed out of pure frustration.

The 29-year-old is studying for a master’s degree in engineering and takes care of his two dogs while his wife studies at university in Saskatchewan. He could never find a reliable and quick boarding kennel when he had to take business trips on short notice.

“I found that it wasn’t very often I got a kennel on the phone on the first try,” he says. “Then you don’t know if they have room and it could take a day to get called back, so if you’re going on business it’s kind of stressful to not know where your dogs are going to be staying.”

So he developed KennelSeek.com, an online kennel reservation and management service. Pet care providers logging on to his website manage reservations and their daily operations at the same time.

— Canwest News Services