UPEI Engineering students win at 2026 Atlantic Engineering Competition
Ten UPEI Faculty of Sustainable Design Engineering (FSDE) teams, totalling 34 students, competed at the 2026 Atlantic Engineering Competition (AEC), held from January 17–19, 2026, at Dalhousie University’s Sexton Campus.
AEC 2026 brought together over 150 of the brightest engineering students from nine universities across Atlantic Canada for design and innovation challenges, with teams competing for spots at the 2026 Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC) to be held at Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec from March 20-23, 2026. Twenty-one UPEI students advanced to the CEC 2026, representing nearly half of the entire Atlantic region’s delegation with other universities sending 22 in combination.
“Considering the number of engineering programs in Atlantic Canada and the size of our student body, we might have hoped to qualify for three to four per cent of the national competition spots,” said Dr. Suzanne Kresta, Dean of the FSDE. “In fact, we qualified for six of the 16 spots—over 30 per cent—and 10 per cent of our students achieved top-three placements in their category across Atlantic Canada. This is a testament to the quality of our students and the emerging excellence of our sustainable design engineering program.”
The following UPEI teams achieved top three in their category:
Innovative Design:
Richard Hetherington, Morgan MacLean, Luke Jennings, Elijah Dodd, Noor Abdelhamid (first place)
Communications:
Myah Van’t Veld and Emma Ledgerwood (second place)
Ethan Drake and Nathan Belanger (third place)
Re-Engineering:
Syed Imran Ali and Syed Daniyal Ali (second place)
Consulting:
Lilly O’Rielly, Lauren Cox, Hilary Dobbin, Ellen Fraser (first place)
Senior Design:
Kelenna Udo, Anton Neubauer, Alice Gladstone, Sabine Wyatt (first place)
Jimmy Hulton, Abby Chapman, Ethan Arsenault-Saunders, Yuvraj Singh-Gill (second place)
The AEC is an annual student-run initiative that began in 1983 and has since grown to become one of the largest and highly anticipated engineering competitions in Canada.
The three-day event provides a setting for students to develop meaningful relationships with their peers and demonstrate their engineering skills in a competitive environment. Students in teams of one to four compete in a series of eight competitions designed to test their innovative, problem-solving, and leadership skills—key qualities of a successful and well-rounded engineer.
The UPEI teams were supported financially by the UPEI Alumni Association as well as the UPEI Faculty of Sustainable Design Engineering, allowing students to participate in the valuable experiences and networking opportunities that the event offered.
In other recent student achievements, Kaitlyn Smith was recognized with one of only nine national leadership awards from the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students, while Lilly O’Rielly received recognition from Engineers Without Borders for her leadership in addressing the root causes of community challenges on PEI.
Congratulations to all!
