Lakehead University’s ninth and largest cohort of the Ingenuity Ascend Accelerator Program pitched their student-led startup companies on Thursday, through the university’s Demo Day.
Eight graduates demonstrated their companies, which ranged from an artificial-intelligence (AI) powered forest monitoring platform and a precision agriculture company to counselling and consultation support and an AI virtual fashion platform that can choose outfits for work or leisure.
The 10-week, boot camp-style program provides emerging founders with funding from the John Dobson Foundation, expert mentorship, weekly workshops, and milestone accountability to prepare them for the business launch.
Alyson MacKay, manager of the Ingenuity Ascend Accelerator program, said each idea was presented in a two-minute pitch showcasing how their solution is designed to address real-world challenges and drive regional economic growth.
“We typically do two programs a year, and we’re going to move to once a year and run a different validation program in between,” MacKay said.
She added that she is going to revamp the overall programming, and in the fall, she’ll work on the “ideation phase” with more focus on the business model canvas and fleshing out ideas.
“We have the intellectual property clinic opening again on campus, and then come winter, we’ll look at a validation model, with a very small amount of seed funding to maybe do some prototype development, market validation and testing,” she said. “Then in May, we’ll get back to the accelerator program, but we’ll have the ideas a little bit more fleshed out, to take a bit of the pressure off of the 10 weeks.”
Vijay Patel, along with his fellow computer science graduates, Sahil Nandha, Kush Makani, Priyansh Patel and Neel Patel, presented Wearify, an AI-powered virtual fashion platform where shoppers can create a photorealistic digital twin, try on outfits virtually on their own body, save looks to a personal wardrobe, and receive AI styling suggestions based on items they already own.
“It’s one of the best courses that we have ever been part of,” Vijay said. We did this project as our final for one of our courses at Lakehead University, and our professor suggested that we meet with Alyson. She’s the one who helped us throughout the 10-week program, funding this project, and helped us raise around $2,500 for our business.”
KC Woilford, who is a registered social worker, presented Reclaimed Wolf Counselling and Consulting, which supports individuals with her grounded, anti-oppressive and narrative-informed social work practice.
“I love the program. I’ve been mulling over this business idea for a couple of years, and it really gave me the kick in the butt to actually launch it,” Woilford said. “The program has set those milestones and provided the guidance that I needed.”
The ninth cohort and their startup companies included:
• BorealSense: Alireza Namvarmotlagh (masters computer engineering).
• Greenshade: Tony Braxton Tchio Ngoumeza (software engineering), Zoha Kamran (mechanical engineering), Sophie Petteplace (software engineering).
• CanopyAI: Janki Gabani (masters computer science).
• Belle Extensions & Co: Mirabel Mordi (nursing).
• Wearify: Priyansh Patel, Vijay Patel, Kush Makani, Sahil Nandha, Neel Patel
(computer science).
• ThriveNest: Sana Sharif (PhD electrical and computer engineering).
• JobRovr: Haard Pathak, Prajith Ravisankar, Srijan Ravisankar (computer science).
• Reclaimed Wolf Counselling and Consulting: KC Woilford (masters social work).
By Sandi Krasowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Jul 15, 2026 at 10:00
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