Four Lassonde students won first and second place at the Young Space Entrepreneurs Competition on Saturday, March 5 at University of Western Ontario. Two teams of students presented their business plans to a panel of judges knowledgeable about entrepreneurship and/or the space sector.
The challenge was to develop a business plan for a profitable product or service in the space industry.
Lassonde students Patrick Hazzard and Shenalie Fernando took first place with their venture, Reaching Horizon. Their business idea was to offer a different type of memorial ceremony that allows people to scatter their loved ones’ ashes into space. Both are fifth-year space engineering students.
Along with two Schulich students, Benjamin Ghatan and Kourosh Kadivar, Lassonde’s Keith Menezes and Yuriy Davydov, third-year space engineering students, took second prize at the competition. They presented Integral Technologies, an optical communication device for interplanetary nanosatellite missions.
“Last year I went to Technion as part of the BEST program, and what I learned about entrepreneurship certainly gave me an edge in this competition,” said Menezes about the win.