Smart Tenant wins top prize at RE/ACTION Showcase

Posted on Friday, April 8th, 2022

The winner of Friday’s virtual RE/ACTION: Applied Research Showcase is Smart Tenant, a mobile app for a property management company in Ottawa to engage in better and continuous communication with their tenants.

Hosted by the Office of Applied Research, Innovation & Entrepreneurship, the goal of RE/ACTION is to create a platform for students to showcase their hard work to an audience of their peers, faculty and community partners. Five project finalists were chosen out of 43 submissions to present to a panel of industry professionals during the live Zoom event.

Created by Mobile Application Design and Development students Karim Shaloh, Eric Shantz, J-C Castagne, Mohsen Qaddoura, Evan Liko and Sandeep Saini, Smart Tenant is a social platform for tenants in their client’s properties to communicate with one another. Team lead Shaloh detailed the team’s work over the past four months in creating an app that would help increase tenant retention, satisfaction and overall customer experience.

Each team was allotted four minutes to present an overview of their project, followed by a Q&A section with the panel of judges. Questions focused on project challenges, as well as considerations when working with the diverse needs of clients.

Moderated by Stephen Gagné, Professor, Business Management and Entrepreneurship at Algonquin College, the judges panel consisted of Sylvain Gagné, Ashoka Patel, Jaswinder Kaur, Lee Bowie and Sabir Mufti.

While the judges were deliberating, participants heard from keynote speaker Jennifer Quizi, Director, Biotherapeutics Manufacturing Centre – Virus Manufacturing Facility at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. Quizi described her research in using viruses as therapeutics to treat diseases like cancer, helping replace genes that are missing in rare diseases in an attempt to cure the patient, as well as in manufacturing vaccines.

Following the keynote address, Algonquin College President and CEO Claude Brulé opened the awards ceremony and announced the winners.

“Each term RE/ACTION brings students and faculty together with community and industry partners to celebrate experiential learning through applied research,” said Brulé. “RE/ACTION for many of us is the time to reflect on hurdles we have overcome and celebrate the collaboration and engineering that led to our successes. Everyone participating in these projects rose to the occasion to solve problems, innovating and pursuing ideas with the kinds of courage and conviction that employers are looking for in today’s workplace, and in the talented, skilled workforce of tomorrow.”

Second place went to Giving Adults a Break Through Play, an online platform to engage adults through play, giving them a break with short, creative activities.

Third place went to POP TikR – Shop & Tour Local, a technological solution seeking to close the distance between customers and small local businesses. It offers a new way to find entertainment, shops, restaurants, and more while saving money and contributing to the local community.

Other finalists included Balanced Brain, an app that serves as a memory aid and motivational tool to help patients with mental health issues to develop healthy lifestyle changes, and WildRoga App, a yoga and wellness app that celebrates the voices of BIPOC and underrepresented communities.

To browse the entire catalogue of this term’s RE/ACTION projects, including the winners, visit this link.

Click here to watch the recording of the event.


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