Send help! From rockets and rovers to fire-fighting drones, these Memorial students are ready for sponsorship

Ref. no.: 112

Student groups from Memorial’s Student Design Hub are pushing their prototypes to the limits.

Some are building a MARS-ready rover; some are designing autonomous drones capable of finding and fighting forest fires.

Others are pushing off-road vehicles to new extremes or striving to be the hometown heroes at an international ROV competition in 2026.

There are also groups working to establish Newfoundland and Labrador as the space hub of Atlantic Canada, quash gender imbalances in STEM fields, enhance AI literacy across the province’s workforce and build a pipeline of students to bolster our fintech industry.

What they all have in common is that you can help them on their journeys, as they strive to make Memorial and our province proud.

Many of these students have and will go on to launch successful ventures or become instrumental to local organizations that drive the future of innovation in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Student Design Showcase Pitch and Pick

The fourth annual Student Design Showcase Pitch and Pick will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 25, from 6–9:30 p.m., under Altum the blue whale in the main entrance of the Core Science Facility on the St. John’s campus.

In five minutes or less, each Memorial student group listed below will pitch their projects and prototypes to potential sponsors in the crowd, followed by a short question and answer period.

In return, each group will recognize their sponsors in a number of ways, including putting their company logos on their rovers, ROVs, rockets and more.

All 13 groups are with Memorial ’s Student Design Hub.

The hub supports Memorial students competing in significant competitions, and  developing a product prototype. These endeavours help them use their classroom learnings to solve real-world challenges.

Mission: almost impossible

Most of the groups are gearing up to compete in international-scale competitions where they’ll have to beat the best student groups and universities worldwide for a podium finish.

Many Memorial students have gotten as close as it gets to that glory. Just last year, Paradigm Engineering and Easten Edge Robotics placed second and third respectively in a self-driving go-kart race and a subsea ROV challenge.

Shakib Miri, operations lead for the Student Design Group, says the competitions demonstrate the technical skills Memorial University students have and their ability to create something that will execute a specific task, as best as possible, to outperform their contemporaries on the international stage.

“A podium finish at these events can lead to more recognition and thus more avenues for funding to continue the development of the team’s product,” said Mr. Miri.

He adds that for individual students, placing in the competitions puts a point of pride on their resumés, helps them gain industry-ready experience in their fields and opens employment and internship opportunities, too.

Of equal importance, the events are simply unforgettable experiences for students.

“The technical events almost always involve a student-designed and student-built thing, which could be an autonomous car, a concrete canoe, a drone, a satellite or something else,” said Dr. Jonathan Anderson of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science. “It’s pretty amazing to see how well our students stack up against the stiffest competition in the world. They regularly finish on the podium for their respective events; when they do, it’s an incredible achievement.”

Read more about all the teams and what they're seeking from sponsors in The Gazette.

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For more information, or to arrange an interview, contact Chad Pelley, media relations manager for Memorial University, at chad.pelley@mun.ca or 709-853-4281.