Alumnus Receives TechAccel Grant from McGill University

Katya Marc, associate director of the McGill Engine Centre, said that the program grants a maximum of $5,000 per team, that the lead applicant must be a current Faculty of Engineering student and that grants are for teams rather than individuals. The goal is to help early-stage ventures to progress to the next level, including finding their product-market fit.

Each team is assigned a mentor, one of McGill’s two part-time technological entrepreneurs in residence, Michael Avedesian and Andrew Csinger. The McGill Engine has now also recruited volunteer business mentors to provide additional support for future cohorts. 

Jiayuan Wang teamed up with Félix Montgrain to launch Cookiestruct, on the conviction that cookie-munching and high-tech are not mutually exclusive. Wang, a Shanghai native and fourth-year McGill mechanical engineering student, said that Cookiestruct makes cookie cutters using 3D printing. But the term cookie cutter is paradoxical, given that the moulds are custom-made, design-specific and individually produced to replicate precisely customers’ drawings and designs. Wang said he got the idea “baking for my host family back in the U.S.”, where he attended Nansemond-Suffolk Academy high school after leaving China and before coming to McGill.

Read the full article originally published by Francois Shalom with the McGill Reporter.