Canyu Wu likes to build new things; it’s what sparked her interest in engineering and earned her the Claudette Mackay-Lassonde Excellence Scholarship.
The bubbly third-year bioengineering student works on a product that enables continuous hormone monitoring with Eli Health, built community on campus by supporting organizations like Women in Tech and McGill Ventures, and helps build businesses as an advisor for the Health Tech & Innovation Lab, an incubator she co-founded two years ago.
“I always loved building things,” she says. “That’s what drew me to engineering: it’s all about understanding a problem, breaking it down, and finding solutions that work.”
Her diverse projects are linked by one common thread: a better world for all, one step at a time.
“If I can help one person and make their life better, that’s what really matters for me,” she says. “I chose to focus on bioengineering because the most direct way to help is by building things to improve people’s health.”
Carrying on a powerful legacy
Wu is the second recipient of Polytechnique Montréal’s Claudette MacKay-Lassonde Excellence Scholarship, a $25,000 Canada-wide annual award which recognizes a female student who demonstrates exceptional academic achievements in engineering, social commitment, and leadership.
The scholarship was established through a donation from the Canadian Engineering Memorial Foundation (CEMF), an organization founded by Claudette Mackay-Lassonde in 1990 to honour the 14 women who lost their lives in the December 6, 1989 tragedy at Polytechnique Montréal.
Claudette MacKay-Lassonde was a visionary and a pioneer in engineering. After earning a degree in chemical engineering from Polytechnique Montréal in 1971, she studied nuclear engineering at the University of Utah and business administration at the University of Toronto and became a trailblazer for diversity in engineering in Canada.
Wu feels it is her responsibility to continue in Mackay-Lassonde's footsteps.
“It’s not just like ‘wow, I’m receiving a gift,’” she says. “It’s a gift that I take responsibility for: I want to continue what Claudette Mackay-Lassonde already started. She was an incredible woman who opened doors for many other women in engineering, and now it is my duty to do the same.”
An early start
Wu started to build on Mackay-Lassonde's legacy as a CEGEP student, creating the Engineering Society of Marianopolis College which allowed her to bring fellow female classmates to visit labs at McGill.
“I wanted girls to see that engineering was a possibility for them,” she says. “It’s always been part of me as a person: to want to open doors for others.”
CEGEP was also when she learned about a project by McGill BioDesign, an Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS) design team, which was developing a biomimetic glue for internal surgeries.
“I was interested in tissue engineering, so I just reached out and asked to help,” she recalls.
But academic work alone was not enough. Wu has an entrepreneurial spirit – she started a soap business in high school – and she wanted to learn to translate academic research into real-world applications that have a positive impact. She began attending events by McGill Ventures, a student-run venture capital organization, to connect with people who were bringing innovative ideas to market.
Making a difference on campus
In her first year at McGill, Wu joined McGill Ventures' executive. Once she learned the ropes, she built her own initiative within the group: the Health Tech & Innovation Lab. With Wu at the helm, the initiative has built partnerships with the Mayo Clinic and multiple startups.
“It’s very focused on what I wanted to bring: promoting innovation in the health tech space,” she explains. “It acts as an incubator within McGill Ventures.”
In parallel, she delved deeper into bioengineering and realized a major gap in research: it was not tailored to women’s bodies. She chose to focus her efforts on this domain, and joined Eli Health, a startup aiming to empower women to take control of their health through hormone monitoring technology. She currently leads quality assurance for the company’s software.
A bold vision to build structures that last
Both of the initiatives Wu built are still running today: the Engineering Society of Marianopolis College continues to inspire female students to pursue engineering, and the health tech incubator is thriving.
In the future, Wu dreams of creating a health tech incubator that will focus specifically on spaces where there are gaps and needs, but also abundant opportunities like women’s health. But first, she feels she needs to keep learning to ensure she has a solid foundation to build upon.
Her next steps are to pursue a Master’s, which she hopes will be in a cross-section of bioengineering, innovation, entrepreneurship, and business.
“I still have this thirst of knowledge and want to go deeper into bioengineering itself and learning more about how to really support entrepreneurship in this space,” she says.