UNB News
News and stories from one of Canada’s top universities

UNB’s Computing Science Creative Space Centre (CS Square) awarded three prizes to computer science students for their top business ideas. This year’s submissions were judged on Nov. 18th by David Grebenc, co-CEO Innovatia; Allen Dillon, CEO, Sentrant; and Ali Ghorbani, dean, faculty of computer science.

“After the success of the first Student Pitch Competition this CS Square initiative is becoming more and more popular among FCS students,” said Natalia Stakhanova, NB Chair in Cyber Security and CS Square head. “This time the number of students who submitted their project ideas for the competition has doubled compared to last year.”

The $1500 first prize was awarded to Rizwan Ali, master student, for “Know your child”. The idea aims to help parents of young children identify signs of mental illnesses. Second place went to Iman Sharafaldin, PhD student, for “Just feed me” and third place was awarded to George Youssef, bachelor of information systems student, for “Cedar Systems”.

CS Square provides computer science students with entrepreneurship training. Students are coached on how to transform an initial idea into a business idea, how to turn that idea into business plan and finally, how to sell that idea to potential investors. The completed business plans are later presented to a panel of judges including investors, industry and faculty. The CS Square Pitch Competition is one of the centre’s many initiatives aimed at promoting innovation and entrepreneurship among computer science students. 

About CS Square

CS Square is an entrepreneurship centre within UNB’s faculty of computer science. The centre assists computer science students with peer learning, knowledge sharing, extracurricular technical-creative IT related activities and entrepreneurship. The goal of CS Square is to create an environment where students, faculty and local industry can meet, to collaborate and exchange innovative ideas.