News & Events

Cristina Canavesi wins two prestigious awards

June 6, 2012

It was just announced that Cristina Canavesi received the 2012 Bill Price and Warren Smith student SPIE award in optical design! The Institute of Optics and her advisor Prof. Jannick Rolland are very proud to call such an outstanding student and researcher our own. Not only did Cristina just win this prestigious design award, but she also participated in a business competition earlier this spring:

Only last month, Cristina and a team of fellow UofR students from different departments won the first place in the Mark Ain buisness model competition!

The competition is open to undergraduate and graduate students across the university. This year 22 teams developed business ideas and models to bring those ideas to market. The top five teams competed in the final competition Wednesday, May 16.

Each team was given 15 minutes to make a presentation before the panel of five judges. At the end, Cristina and her teammates Luis Soto, Cheng Shu, and Nebiat Kidane who developed an optical device that improves the treatment of skin cancer and pre-cancer took the top prize, a check for $10,000 to move forward with their project.

“I really believe it’s going to help people and I really want to get it in the hands of doctors,” said Cristina Canavesi, team leader and a fifth-year optics student in Professor Jannick Rolland's group. “It’s been a fun ride because I had no business experience six months ago so this is all new to me.”

Congratulations to Cristina for leading the winning team!

To read the article about the competition with a picture of the winners, click here.