2026

First Prize – $75,000

• Recipients 
  Mathieu Pelletier, Benjamin Ste-Marie, Ariane Fortin-Haines and Mathias Groleau | dt Pharma | Université de Sherbrooke 
• Project
  Building on a very real need in healthcare settings, the dt Pharma team developed SORA, a technology designed to automate the filling of oral syringes that improves patient safety, frees up time for healthcare professionals, and reduces medication waste. It is now ready to move on to hospital trials. For the four co-founders, this first product is part of a broader vision: developing cutting-edge technologies in Québec that can improve the quality and safety of care, then bringing them to the international stage. 

Second Prize – $50,000

• Recipients 
  Juliette Gagnon and Marie-Ève Morissette | MicroMea | Université Laval 
• Project
  Friends for more than 20 years, Juliette and Marie-Ève know how to debate and exchange ideas, but they agree on one thing: the urgent need for climate action. With MicroMea, they are developing a containerized anaerobic digestion system that turns a variety of organic waste into value directly on the sites of businesses and municipalities. In addition to reducing landfilling, their solution could cut transportation costs by up to four times and prevent the emission of 50,000 tCO2e in Canada. 

Third Prize  – $30,000 (tie)

• Recipients 
  Manon Sayag, Christophe Langevin, Marsyly Lynn and Emma Mamifarananahary | FloteXa | Institut national de la recherche scientifique - INRS 
• Project
  Behind FloteXa, a team of four is proposing a new way to care for water with floating vegetated islands, now being tested in the Port of Québec. The diversity of their backgrounds fuels the team’s vision. While some of its members come from countries where access to drinking water is limited, others grew up in a context of abundance. Yet they share the same conviction: water is a precious resource that must be protected. With FloteXa, they hope to make a lasting difference in the daily lives of shoreline communities, in Québec and elsewhere. 

Third Prize  – $30,000 (tie)

• Recipients 
  Maxime Leblanc, Jérémie Lévesque, Alexandre Corriveau and Mikaël Guillet | Technologies Seanetik | Université de Sherbrooke 
• Project
  To combat the spread of invasive aquatic species from one port to another, along with the greenhouse gas emissions linked to the algae and molluscs that build up on ship hulls, Seanetik offers a robot capable of capturing these organisms. The team has already completed its first hull-cleaning contracts for a major player this past summer. Inspired by world-renowned Québec companies such as Couche-Tard, the four founders now aim to keep rolling out their technology in Québec’s major ports and become an international benchmark.

Fourth Prize  – $15,000

• Recipients 
  Jad Rabhi and Loriann Razafimandimby | Homunculus | Polytechnique Montréal 
• Project
  Making research on Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and epilepsy more accessible to public and private laboratories: that is the mission Jad and Loriann have set for themselves. With Homunculus, these two young entrepreneurs are developing a platform that connects living neurons to electronic systems in order to record, stimulate and analyze their activity in real time. At the crossroads of computer science, AI and experimental biology, the duo has already sold some ten units of its prototype to researchers and is in discussions with many other potential customers.