Image by Owen Egan. From left to right: Ehsan Yousefi, Professor Luc Mongeau, Professor Narges Armanfard, Kartik Mangalvedhe, Professor Jeffrey Bergthorson, and Professor Changhong Cao.
Tucked just off a lively corridor in McGill’s Faculty of Engineering, the McGill Engine Centre buzzes with entrepreneurial activity. Established in 2013 from a transformative gift by the late William Seath, the Centre has become a launchpad for ideas and research that leap from campus labs into the real world.
The Research Support Fund helps to support the McGill Engine Centre’s administrative staff salaries, ensuring they can deliver vital services to the campus community. In turn, the McGill Engine has trained more than 2200 students and professors, providing them with business mentorship, project funding, tools, and training to translate their ideas and fundamental research to the marketplace. Since the opening of McGill Engine’s physical centre in 2019, in the spirit of collaboration, it has opened its doors, free of charge, to other McGill units and McGill student teams for their hosting of seminars, conferences, and events.
Since its inception, the McGill Engine has fueled a wave of student startups and research spinoffs—29 and 28 respectively, and empowered students and faculty through strategic support, mentorship, and distributed more than two million dollars in project grants, awards, and stipends stemming from philanthropy to the students and professors participating in its programs.
Several startups supported by the McGill Engine have gone on to make a significant mark in Quebec and across Canada. Among them is CarbiCrete located in Lacine, Quebec, which has earned international acclaim for its breakthrough cement-free concrete technology developed at McGill University. It’s cofounder Mehrdad Mahoutian worked on the technology as a PhD student in Civil Engineering with McGill Professor Yixin Shao, with whom he shared a 2015-2016 William and Rhea Seath Award in Engineering Innovation from the McGill Engine. Patio Drummond, a hardscape manufacturer in Drummondville, Quebec, is currently producing and selling cement-free concrete products manufactured using CarbiCrete technology. Canal Block in Port Colborne, Ontario is also manufacturing CarbiCrete-enabled products for the Ontario market.
“The vision is about driving innovation by supporting and training our professors and students and working closely with industry for R&D,” explains Katya Marc, Engine’s Associate Director who co-founded the Centre and its programs along with Benoit Boulet, Associate Vice-President, Innovation and Partnerships. “For us, innovation is really a process, and you have to go all the way to implementation to create value for society to achieve an innovation, otherwise it remains an invention or an idea. Our students learn and develop their entrepreneurial skills by going through this process of innovation.”
Through hands-on training and experiential learning, the Centre instills and nurtures an entrepreneurial mindset in students and faculty, inspiring them to pursue their big ideas, build connections, and create meaningful impact.
“It’s amazing to see how the Centre has grown over time,” said Viviane Yargeau, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. A Chemical Engineering professor who has also benefitted from the support that Engine provides to researchers, Yargeau recalled the excitement in 2019 when Engine’s physical centre was built in the Frank Dawson Adams Building.
The McGill Engine Centre exemplifies how strategic support and infrastructure can transform research into real-world innovation. With continued investment from programs like the Research Support Fund, the Centre is poised to empower even more students and faculty to turn bold ideas into impactful ventures.