McMaster’s innovation community showed up in full force to celebrate the university’s entrepreneurial ecosystem at the third annual Made at Mac event.
Through its commercialization and entrepreneurship programs, McMaster has supported nearly 400 startups, with over $1 billion raised and more than 1,000 jobs created, Gianni Parise, vice-president of Research, told attendees at the recent campus event.
“Made at Mac is a celebration of that success, but more importantly, it celebrates the people behind those numbers,” said Parise. “The founders who took the leap, the students who tried something new, the mentors and partners who said yes, and the teams who make this ecosystem function.”
The event was an opportunity for innovators, investors, and partners to network and learn how discoveries in the lab are being transformed into real-world impact.
A panel hosted by President Susan Tighe offered insights into the commercialization journeys of three startups that have spun off from research at McMaster.
“We have something at Mac that is unique, and that is the drive and the passion of the people here,” said Engineering professor Ali Emadi, founder and CEO of Enedym.
He urged budding entrepreneurs to take advantage of the wealth of mentorship opportunities at McMaster and to build a cabinet of trusted supporters to provide unbiased and honest advice: “If there is somebody who is rooting for you — a PhD supervisor, a master’s supervisor, a dean, a president — hang onto them.”
Mackensey Bacon, CEO of McMaster spinoff NodeAI, highlighted the rigorous process of the McMaster Seed Fund in making her company stronger and more sustainable in the long run.
“The McMaster Industry Liaison Office (MILO) team did an excellent job of putting us through the wringer, helping us refine our pitch and fill holes to set us up for success with other investment partners,” said Bacon, whose AI-augmented platform for improved lung cancer diagnoses has also benefited from clinical validation secured through McMaster’s health sciences ecosystem.
Biomedical engineering PhD student Manak Bajaj said participating in programs like the Health Innovation Bootcamp at the Clinic helped him develop his medical startup Wonder Guard, which won the top prize at the Forge’s Startup Survivor incubator competition last fall.
He credits the “tremendous support” he received through the Forge and its team, including manager of student entrepreneurship Mariya Leslie, with guiding him through the complex and challenging process of building a company that aims to be fully operational by this summer.
“I’ve found that the entrepreneurial mentorship has made me a more honest scientist, and the research support has made me a more adventurous entrepreneur,” said Bajaj, whose startup aims to make it easier to detect urinary tract infections (UTIs) with a smart catheter bag powered by AI.
McMaster Student Seed Fund Winners
The winners of the 2026 McMaster Student Seed Fund, which provides student and recent alumni startup founders with $15,000 in funding and hands-on mentorship, were announced at the celebration. This year’s winners are:
- Wonder Guard: developing an AI-powered catheter bag that rapidly detects the presence of bacteria that cause UTIs
- SOLAS Innovations (formerly Lyra): creating wearable technology for continuous glucose monitoring for children with Type 1 diabetes
- The Sentinel Group: building a smartphone-based platform that assesses food freshness and predicts remaining shelf life in real time
- Qorodi: a quantitative quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) platform for emission testing of museum-relevant materials
- Aetherion: developing sustainable high-performance alternative purification technologies in cancer drug development
- NerView: designing technology that integrates computer vision, AI, and optical imaging to enhance surgical precision
Emma Petschulat, one of the co-founders of SOLAS Innovations, said the funding will help them launch pilot studies with pediatric patients for user feedback on their device, as well as access valuable mentorship as an early-stage company.
Petschulat and her co-founders were originally unsure about even applying for the fund, so this win serves as a reminder to take every opportunity that presents itself, she said. “This is going to be instrumental in helping our company progress and actually reach the market.”
The event also featured a Startup Showcase with demonstrations of the innovations that are being translated from the lab to the real world through McMaster’s commercialization ecosystem.
Click here to learn more about the initiatives and programs to support entrepreneurship at McMaster.