PEY Co-op Program
Recognition Awards
Sixth Annual PEY Co-op Award Winners (2022-2023)
The Engineering Career Centre's PEY Co-op Awards celebrate our industry partners and students who help make PEY Co-op a successful and rewarding program. PEY Co-op provides our students with full-time job experience that can only be gained from this immersive industry program.
Thank you to everyone who submitted entries to acknowledge the dedicated people who went above and beyond during both Summer and the 12–16-month 2022-2023 work terms.
We are thrilled to share this year's award recipients in the following categories:
- PEY Co-op Student of the Year
- PEY Co-op Mentor of the Year
- PEY Co-op Employer of the Year
We also wish to acknowledge all of our outstanding nominees for their significant contributions to our community. In addition, we thank each of the nominators for taking the time to acknowledge and recognize this important work.
PEY Co-op Student of the Year
The PEY Co-op Student of the Year Award recognizes a PEY Co-op student that demonstrated excellence in the workplace as an outstanding member of the employer’s team. Employers nominate students for this award, and this year two students were recognized for their exceptional contributions in their respective workplaces.
Barry Bytensky
PEY Co-op Employer: The Hospital for Sick Children
Barry Bytensky (EngSci 2T3+PEY) is a graduating Engineering Science student in the Biomedical Systems option, with a minor in Artificial Intelligence Engineering. He spent the PEY co-op term at the SickKids’ PCIGITI Lab, where he developed a novel simulation platform to explore prospective high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) treatments of retinoblastoma (RB). His promising findings led to several presentations at SickKids research conferences.
He has continued to work with PCIGITI as a part of his undergraduate thesis project, where he is experimentally validating the simulation platform. His excitement towards novel HIFU treatments for RB has led him to pursue a MASc in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto.
He is honored to receive this award, and would like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Adam Waspe, Dr. Jane Walter, and Dr. Ashwin Mallipatna for their continued support. He would also like to acknowledge Dr. James Drake and the entire PCIGITI team for their support throughout his co-op term.
Karma Sadhwani
PEY Co-op Employer: Scotiabank
Karma Sadhwani (Chem 2T3+PEY) is a graduating Chemical Engineering student with a minor in Engineering Business. During her Professional Experience Year (PEY) Co-op at Scotiabank, she served as a Trade Floor Technology Consultant with the Global Banking & Markets Technology team. In this role, she was involved in managing various high-risk trading applications utilized within the department and actively pursued automation opportunities across different teams on the trade floor.
At the University of Toronto, Karma made the most of her time by taking on various leadership roles, including Chair of the Canadian Society of Chemical Engineering (CSChE), Co-Chair of Brew of T, participating in the Cast of Skule Nite, and completing an undergraduate thesis titled "Identifying and Evaluating Factors that Affect PEY Positions in Chemical Engineering" under the guidance of Professor Ariel Chan.
This summer, Karma will return to Scotiabank as a Sales & Trading Rotational Analyst.
PEY Co-op Mentor of the Year
The PEY Co-op Mentor of the Year Award recognizes an exemplary individual and their commitment to excellence in mentoring. Through a range of professional development opportunities, the two mentors guided and supported a PEY Co-op student or students to enhance their skills and knowledge during the 2022-2023 work term.
Adriano Lombardi
PEY Co-op Employer: Walmart Canada
Adriano Lombardi is an accomplished professional with over 23 years of extensive process improvement experience and over 16 years of cross-functional leadership across diverse sectors, including financial services, retail, and manufacturing. In his most recent role as Director of Business Process Re-engineering at Walmart Canada, Adriano collaborated closely with business teams to drive medium to large-scale operational and digitization projects.
Adriano holds a BASc in Industrial Engineering (2000 + PEY) and a MEng (2012) from the University of Toronto. In addition, he is a licensed Professional Engineer, a Six Sigma Black Belt, and a SAFe Agilist. Since his first role in 2000, Adriano has been a passionate mentor within the PEY program. His unwavering commitment to nurturing talent and championing the program has spanned his entire career.
Alice Gao
PEY Co-op Employer: Deep Genomics
Alice joined Deep Genomics in 2015, following the startup's founding by her PhD supervisor, Professor Brendan Frey.
During her time at Deep Genomics, Alice has engaged in diverse areas, from building software for ML research to developing models for genome biology and drug discovery.
Her passion lies in creating tooling to support reproducible ML research and accelerate the development of genome biology ML models, particularly in an era where training such models demands substantial data and computational resources.
PEY Co-op Employer of the Year
The PEY Co-op Employer of the Year Award recognizes an exceptional employer that hired from the PEY Co-op Program during the 2022-2023 work term. The recipient of this award provided a unique work experience and fostered a positive and supportive environment to a PEY Co-op student or students through enriching professional development opportunities. Because of the employer, the student or students came away from their PEY Co-op experience with enhanced knowledge, honed interests and a head start on developing as a professional.
MDA Space
With a 55-year record of firsts and 450+ missions, MDA Space is a trusted space mission partner to the rapidly expanding global space industry. Spanning communications satellites, Earth and space observation, and space exploration and infrastructure, our expertise and innovations are enabling some of the most ambitious missions happening today and making possible our customers’ bold visions for tomorrow.
Building the space between proven and possible, we are pushing boundaries, tackling big challenges, and imagining solutions that inspire and change the world for the better.
Check out current openings at www.mda.space.
PEY Co-op Student of the Year Nominees
Adam Mutassem - Mattamy Homes
Alex Kohlman Sawa - Terrestrial Energy
Ali Aboelela - JCA Technologies
Alison Okumura - Hatch Ltd.
Alston Lo - Deep Genomics
Alyssa Chote - HTS Engineering
Amina (Amy) Al Maleh - Global Affairs Canada
Amy Huang - Environment and Climate Change Canada
Andriy Drozd - Garner
Annemeike Tucker - SLR Consulting (Canada) Ltd.
Arafat Syed Shah - Intel PSG
Audrey Dessureault - TWD
Barry Bytensky - Hospital for Sick Children
Ben Akkermans - CPP Investments
Blake Gigiolio - AMD
Chen-Yuan (Thomas) Lin - Signal 1
Daniel Koen - TC Energy
David Zazai - Enbridge Gas Inc.
Desmond Hui - Ministry of Transportation
Eleanor Vaz - Kellanova (previously known as Kellogg)
Emma Day - National Research Council Canada
Emma Seabrook - RBC
Ennio Ottaviani - Concast
Esme Bonnell - Cortex Design
Ferdinand Tonby-Strandborg - Norsk Titanium AS
Insha Merchant - TC Energy
Jack Phelps - Inpria
Jesus Martinez - Royal Bank of Canada
John Lewczuk - Arcturus Networks
Karma Sadhwani - Scotiabank
Kursum Fatima - Ontario Power Generation
Laura Battista - Kinectrics Inc.
Liah Scott - WalterFedy
Lucia Huang - Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Madeleine Chu - CIBC
Mahdi Abdul-Jalil - Fidelity
Margartia Savguira - Sanofi
Matthew Lioukras - Safran Landing Systems
Michael Milad - City of Toronto
Nadia Candler - e-zinc
Natalia Bellefleur - ecobee
Natalie Chan - StoneX
Nili Upadhyay - North York General Hospital
Olivia Lotzer - Traferox Technologies Inc.
Parth Mahendru - Bombardier
Qianqian Zhang - Analog Devices (ADI)
Rajiv Andrew Parasramsingh - Royal Bank of Canada
Rishabh Saini - Red Hat
Rohan Patel - Arctic Wolf Inc
Seeun Lee - City of Toronto
Shiqi Xu - National Research Council of Canada
Shuixin Hu - Ministry of Education, Government of Ontario
Skye Neale - Sanofi
Sofia Karter - University of Toronto
Stefan Scodellaro - Microchip Technology
Tiffanie Truong - Veeva Systems
Timothy Squire - Periscope Capital
Urara Murakami - Gannett Fleming Canada ULC
Vanessa Elefteriadis - RBC
Vatsal Bagri - Niyo Solutions Inc
Vishal Radhakrishnan - TC Energy
Wayne Quach - Environment Climate Change Canada
Wei Sha - City of Toronto
William Hanley-Steemers - e-Zinc
Yiran Wang - eCAMION
Yuanzhe Deng - PTC
Yukang Wen - RBC Capital Markets
Zeynep Tibik - Intel Canada
PEY Co-op Mentor of the Year Nominees
Adriano Lombardi - Walmart Canada
Alex Ng - Zebra Technologies
Alexander Brandimarte - RBC Capital Markets
Ali Kalantarian - Intel Corporation
Alice Gao - Deep Genomics
Aziz Ahmed - Ministry of Environment
Brock Clayden - Sanofi Pasteur
Carol Yang - Ontario Power Generation
Felipe Perez - Signal 1
Filip Jeremic - Qualcomm Canada Inc
Greg Hatt - Security Compass
Jackie Liang - Aecon Group inc. (Aecon Utility Engineering)
John Beresford - NVIDIA
Johnathan Cai - DXS - Direct Expansion Solutions
Joshua Friedrick - Raven Industries
JP AMORIM - Dragados - Finch West LRT Project
Kai Zhang - Intel of Canada
Kevin Ngai - Environment and Climate Change Canada
Kevin Eng - ecobee
Kieran Corr - ecobee
Kody Orr - Litens Automotive Partnership
Lucas Della Mora - Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC)
Mahdi Zangeneh - Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks
Marin Ming - Sanofi
Mark Horbal - CPP Investments
Parker Zhang - Qualcomm
Pascal Yu - TC Energy
Pavel Soudakov - FedEx Ground
Rachit Bhambri - Enbridge
Reza Nakhjavani - Intel
Rodrigo Fernandez-Gonzalez - University of Toronto
Ryan Boyd - Enbridge
Sarndip Sahota - Modern Niagara
Serag Gadelrab - Qualcomm Canada Inc
Sherif Abdelsamad - Jule Power
Stefano Martinez - Cadillac Fairview
Sumit Sharma - TD Securities
Thomas Lin - SpaceRyde
Tom Kralidis - Environment and Climate Change Canada
Vlad Mandrychenko - Garnercorp
Volodymyr Mandrychenko - Garner Distributed Workflow
Xiuye (Sam) Ruan - Honda of Canada Manufacturing (HCM)
Yuhan Lee - Brigham and Women's Hospital (Harvard Medical School)
PEY Co-op Employer of the Year Nominees
BA Consulting Group Ltd.
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC)
ConCast Pipe
Dufferin Construction
ecobee
Environment and Climate Change Canada
Garnercorp
Genesys
Geotab
JANA Corporation
Kinectrics
MDA
NETINT Technologies Inc.
NVIDIA
Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks
Ontario Power Generation
Procter & Gamble
Qualcomm
Qualcomm Canada Inc
Rakuten Kobo Inc.
Raven Industries
Royal Bank of Canada
Signal 1
TD Securities
Veeva Systems
Walmart Canada
Xero
Xero Accounting Software