Génies en affaires competition: a student from the School on the winning team
April 7, 2022
A student from HEC Montréal, Naïl Sousa Cordeiro, is one of the members of the winning team of the Génies en affaires (engineering in business) competition, an event organized by Acfas, which rewards the best innovations resulting from university research activities.
Naïl Sousa Cordeiro, currently studying in the Personalized Certificate in Accounting program, won the jury’s first prize with his teammates Christelle Luce (McGill University), Olivier Bourbonnais (ÉTS), Mehdi El Hassani (Université de Montréal) and Éric Hanigan (UQAM). Their mentor was Jean-Pierre Desmarais, strategic consultant in medical device technologies.
The team won a prize worth more than $22,000 in consulting services and scholarships.
The winning project, Ditch Labs, is a smart medical technology that helps smokers quit smoking. Ditch Labs combines the use of a nicotine vaporizer with a self-care mobile app that suggests different behavioural strategies to its users. Its purpose is to gradually reduce nicotine consumption, while limiting the risk of misuse, and to alleviate withdrawal symptoms. Smokers benefit from a personalized approach that uses artificial intelligence, since the treatment is adjusted progressively based on the data collected.
Naïl Sousa Cordeiro
Six teams were finalists in the Génies en affaires competition. The project presentations to a jury of experts took place on March 29, on Facebook. The public was also invited to vote for their favourite project.
Learn more about the Génies en affaires competition (in French only)