PEY Co-op Program
Recognition Awards 2024-2025
Eighth Annual PEY Co-op Award Winners (2024-2025)
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 2024-2025 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.
Sara Zia
PEY Co-op Employer: Tenstorrent
Sara Zia (ECE 2T5+PEY) is a graduating Electrical Engineering student at the University of Toronto. She spent her PEY co-op term at Tenstorrent as a Signal Integrity intern, where she focused on designing and optimizing high-speed chiplet packages for Tenstorrent’s next-gen AI hardware.
Sara has continued to work in Signal Integrity through her fourth-year Capstone project in which she developed an open-source tool for S-parameter extraction of chiplet-to-chiplet interfaces. Her passion for the field has led her to pursue a MASc at the University of Toronto, where she will be working in the University of Toronto Electric Vehicle (UTEV) Research Centre, continuing her focus on signal and power integrity.
Sara is incredibly flattered to receive this award. She would like to give a special thank you to her manager, Aydin Nabovati, and her SI/PI mentors, J.P. Mappes and Adrian Motamedi, as well as the entire Tenstorrent team for their guidance and support throughout her internship.
Sofiia Savchyn
Summer Co-op Employer: t0.technology
Sofiia Savchyn is an Electrical Engineering student who completed her summer co-op at t0.technology, a company developing integrated microwave systems for superconducting sensors and radio astronomy instrumentation.
During her term, Sofiia worked with the company’s integrated control system (t0.technology CRS), where she developed end-to-end transfer functions to calibrate system performance across a range of operating conditions. These calibrations are now embedded in the system firmware and enabled the platform’s first measurements with superconducting sensors, results that were later presented at the SPIE conference.
Sofiia has since returned to t0.technology for a 12-month co-op, where she is designing superconducting detectors (MKIDs) and cryogenic hardware, integrating them into experimental test platforms, and collaborating with research teams on novel scientific instrumentation.
She is honoured to receive this award and would like to thank Dr. Joshua Montgomery and the t0.technology team for their mentorship and support.
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 mentor guided and supported a PEY Co-op student or students to enhance their skills and knowledge during the 2024-2025 work term.
Anthony Sgro
Arcadis
Anthony has over 14 years of experience with Arcadis, leading projects, providing consulting and advisory services, as well as engineering and system deployment oversight for a variety of systems projects including toll and revenue systems.
Anthony holds a B.A.Sc in Civil Engineering (1T2 + PEY) and M.Eng (1T4) from the University of Toronto and also has his P.Eng. Anthony also participated in the PEY program as a student in 2011 at Arcadis (formally IBI Group) and has been a strong advocate of the program. He has led the hiring and management of PEY students for his team for over 8 years and is passionate about assisting students in self-development and career growth.
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 2024-2025 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.
Birch Hill Equity Partners
The Data Science & Strategy Team at Birch Hill sits at the intersection of analytics, strategy, and AI. With backgrounds spanning engineering, math, science, and business, and partnering directly with investment professionals and portfolio company senior executives, we challenge our team to solve complex, high-impact problems across our portfolio companies.
Every team member, including co-op students, work on initiatives that influence key decisions and drive meaningful change within the businesses we support. From developing advanced analytical models to defining competitive positioning and market strategy to implementing AI across our organizations, our challenges begin with defining strategy and end with tactical technical execution. Projects provide hands-on exposure to strategy and advanced analytics in a fast-paced, high-accountability environment where team members take ownership from analysis through implementation.
Learn more at https://www.birchhillequity.com/
PEY Co-op Student of the Year Nominees
| Aaron Lio - Birch Hill Equity Partners |
| Aaryan Nagpal - Arcadis |
| Adam Mainella - University of Toronto - Facilities & Services |
| Andrew Demusz - JC Infrastructure |
| Armaghan Kazerani - Arcadis |
| Basma Elsabban - Ontario Power Generation |
| Bence Suranyi - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) |
| Che Yu Chen (Ivan) - E-One Moli Energy (Canada) Ltd. |
| David Kochanski - University of Toronto - Facilities & Services |
| Elia Cheng - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) |
| Eva Erkocaj - Honda of Canada Mfg. |
| Gregory Stewart - Continuous Colour Coat Limited (MSC) |
| Güçlü Can - Bombardier |
| Hannah Dempster - RAB Design Lighting Inc. |
| Haoze (Noel) Wang - Magna Electronics |
| Henrik Zimmerman - BorderPass |
| Hikaru Kurosaw - Princess Margaret Cancer Centre (UHN) |
| Hiu Lam Chloe Soong - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) |
| Inaas Asad - Garner |
| Jiayu (Bryan) Yin - Johnson Electric Canada |
| Justine DelSocorro - Alfa Laval inc. |
| Kathy Lin - Uber Inc |
| Katie Holliday - Collins Aerospace |
| Laura Lin - Qualcomm Canada ULC |
| Leen Bazbaz - Baylis Medical Technologies Inc. |
| Lisa Bera - Ontario Power Generation |
| Mary Ghazi - Scotiabank |
| Melvin Fang - Hanon Systems EFP Canada Ltd. |
| Michael Chan - Canadian Natural Resources (CNRL) |
| Muaaz Nisar - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) |
| Muhammad Abbas - Toyota Motor North America |
| Nour Barsoum - Celestica |
| Rayan Mustafa - Evertz |
| Rayan Sibai - D.L. Engineering Inc. |
| Ryan Yang - Pratt & Whitney Canada |
| Sanjay Mani - IESO |
| Shenxiaozhu (Leo) Xu - City of Toronto |
| Shreya Madhan - Sanofi |
| Sophia McGregor - Scotiabank |
| Stephanie Lu - Birch Hill Equity Partners |
| Stephanie Temovsky - ATS Industrial Automation |
| Uddhava Swaminathan - NOVA Chemicals |
| Whitefield Cameron - Hydro One Networks Inc. |
| William Krestow - Next Hydrogen |
| Yasmeen Smadi - Arcadis |
| Yuewen (Caroline) Diao - Syensqo |
| Yuyuan (Cici) Cao - Litens Automotive |
PEY Co-op Mentor of the Year Nominees
| Amanda Nowicki - Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) |
| Anna Larkin - Birch Hill Equity Partners |
| Brendan Dewalt - Posterity Group |
| Colby Bland - Engineering CPR |
| David Duong - Arcadis |
| David Elliott - AGS Automotive Systems |
| David Jun Wei Li - Hanon Systems EFP Canada Ltd |
| Devin Luu - E-Zinc |
| Domenic Marchese - iManage |
| Ernie Lo - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) |
| Guile Wu - Huawei Noah's Ark Lab |
| Harley Wu - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) |
| Harvey Liu - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) |
| Imranul Karim - Hydro One |
| John Salazar - TC Energy |
| Joshua Montgomery - t0.technology |
| Kirsten Strahlendorf - Sanofi |
| Kyu Won (James) Choi - Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (formerly), Honda Canada Inc. (currently) |
| Mariana Gounalakis - Cadillac Fairview |
| Mihai (Mike) Faroga - Johnson Electric Canada Ltd. |
| Muhammad Obaid - Intel Inc. |
| Ravi Kumar - Celestica |
| Robert Warner - Marvell technology |
| Steven Zhou - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) |
| Uzair Ahmad - Evertz Microsystems |
| Vanessa Lewis - MDA Space |
PEY Co-op Employer of the Year Nominees
| Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) |
| Arcadis |
| BA Consulting Group |
| Celestica |
| City of Toronto |
| E11 Bio |
| Hydro One |
| Marvell technology |
| MDA Space |
| Peel Plastics |
| Sanofi |
| Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (TMMC) |
| Xero |
With our eighth annual PEY Co-op Program Recognition Awards, the Engineering Career Centre celebrates the students, employers, and ambassadors in the engineering community who contributed to the excellence of our flagship work-experience program in 2024-2025.