Waterloo grads named first Canadian winners of James Dyson Award

The Voltera V-One team is shown in a James Dyson Foundation handout photo.

A company started by four University of Waterloo graduates has become the first Canadian firm to win a prestigious international prize.

Voltera, a Kitchener-based manufacturer of circuit board printers, was named Tuesday as the winner of the James Dyson Award.

Speaking with CTV News, co-founder Alroy Almeida says the idea for the company started with a roadblock he and his colleagues were repeatedly running into while on the job.

“We would be out at the various places that we would work, designing electronics, sending the designs to China, spending hundreds of dollars, waiting for weeks – and getting it back and realizing it was wrong, or the customer changed their mind,” he said.

“Before we knew it, we were past our deadlines (and) over budget.”

Their solution was to design a printer capable of printing the actual circuit boards, turning a weeks-long global process into one that could be completed locally in a matter of hours.

“Everybody, no matter what industry, you’re in, is getting slowed down by something as simple as not having access to circuit boards,” he said.

Almeida said Voltera’s technology could be used in industries ranging from automotive to robotics to renewable energy.

The Dyson Award is given to post-secondary students who have invented something that solves a problem.

Almeida said that his coworkers – there are now 10 people working for Voltera – were surprised to learn they had won.

“Everybody knows the Dyson company. To have their engineers and James Dyson himself give us their vote of confidence means so much to us,” he said.

Dyson himself was quick to return the praise, saying in a press release that Voltera’s founders are “four impressive young graduates.”

“Their solution makes prototyping electronics easier and more accessible – particularly to students and small businesses,” he said.

“But it also has the potential to inspire many more budding engineers.”

For winning the award, Voltera has been given $54,000 from the James Dyson Foundation.

A further $9,000 will go to the University of Waterloo.