Concordia-McGill winners of global sustainability challenge honoured at Montreal City Hall
On Friday, September 5, an interdisciplinary team of students from Concordia and McGill were invited to Montreal City Hall to sign the Livre d’or. The team was recognized for winning the Shell Idea360 student competition, a highly competitive global sustainability challenge.
Team GLAS is comprised of Sami Sayegh, a master’s student at McGill, Charles Gedeon, a recent graduate of the John Molson School of Business and Al-Hurr Al-Dalli, who is in Film Studies at Concordia.
This past May, they took home the Best Project and the Best Presentation prizes at the international competition, held in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Their theoretical concept, called Skywell, is designed to harvest dew in arid locations.
During the ceremony at City Hall, Montreal City Councillor Harout Chitilian congratulated Team GLAS on behalf of the city. “We’re very proud of what the team achieved on the world stage. That level of innovation needs to be acknowledged as a coup for Montreal.”
Team GLAS signed their page in front of several proud on-lookers, including Graham Carr, Concordia’s vice-president, research and graduate studies, Xavier-Henri Hervé, director of District 3, Concordia’s multidisciplinary innovation centre and incubator, and Deborah Dysart-Gale, chair of Concordia’s Centre for Engineering in Society.
“This successful collaboration between a McGill student and two Concordia students is a great example of how partnerships with different schools are forged in the spirit of entrepreneurship,” said Graham Carr. ‘It’s also a testament to the role of District 3 as an incubator of ideas.”
“It’s an honour for all of us associated with the Skywell team,” added Hervé. “The winning team is the fruit of a true multi-disciplinary collaboration. This is what the District 3 ecosystem is about and why we believe District 3 teams win no matter which way you look at it.”
Hervé introduced Team GLAS to Dysart-Gale, who accompanied them to the competition in Rotterdam and helped them polish their award-winning pitch.
“Those of us lucky enough to work with young creatives — our job is to use our experience to suggest places where they might expect challenges or opportunities as they bring their work into their future,” said Dysart-Gale.
Is Skywell ready to go beyond the idea stage? “It’s tough to make a prototype without an engineer on the project,” said Gedeon of Team GLAS. “We’re looking to partner with an engineer who accepts our wish to keep Skywell a not-for-profit, open-source solution to help communities in need of fresh water. It’s hard to get investors interested in something that isn’t first and foremost for profit.”
Learn more about District 3 innovators.
Get inspired to compete at the next Shell Ideas360!