In mid-March, four U of T Engineering students — Rafael Jabbour, Alina Khan, Lavneet Sidhu and Daniel Rolfe (all Year 3 CompE) — took first place at the Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC).
The team designed an augmented reality platform that enables building inspectors to quickly spot defects using a smartphone. Their solution earned the top spot for programming, U of T’s first win in that category in more than two decades, and the first in any category since 2022.
“It felt absolutely surreal,” says Sidhu.
“We went into the competition aiming to place top three, but at the start of the awards ceremony we had no expectations, only hopes. The moment itself was just ecstatic.”
“We completely lost it, jumping and screaming,” says Jabbour.
“What really got to me was seeing other universities celebrating with us — the teams that didn’t win were genuinely happy for us. That made the CEC experience even better.”
The win marked the culmination of a journey that began over a year ago. The four teammates had been friends since their first year, but it wasn’t until their second year that they first heard about the University of Toronto Engineering Kompetitions (UTEK).
“Rafael and I were in a lecture one day when the UTEK directors presented to the class, and it just immediately felt like the perfect competition for us,” says Sidhu.
“I hadn’t done a hackathon before, but it sounded like a great opportunity, so I was in,” says Khan.
The foursome competed at UTEK 2025, winning first place and a chance to compete at the 2025 Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC), which was held January 25–26, 2025 at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont.
Though the team did not advance any further that year, they knew they were onto something.
“Even though we came up short, it definitely fuelled us to come back stronger and try to win this time around,” says Rolfe.
“By this year, we already had that chemistry, so it was an easy decision to run it back with the same team.”
The team competed at UTEK for the second time this past January.
The challenge selected for the programming competition was to design a hospital inventory automation system, which would enable robots to navigate via building blueprints and transport supplies between rooms.
“I think what set us apart was that we actually deployed our system to the cloud,” says Jabbour.
“You could access it through a URL, so it wasn’t just running locally on a laptop. It made a big difference during the presentation because the judges could interact with it live, and everything worked smoothly without any bugs.”
After that design placed first, the team headed to the 2026 Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC), which took place at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ont.
This time, the design challenge involved creating an interplanetary route planner that calculates fuel-efficient trajectories between planets using real orbital mechanics.
“OEC was a big level up from UTEK,” says Rolfe.
“Last year, we weren’t fully expecting that jump in difficulty, but this time around we had a much clearer execution plan, and we were a lot more intentional about things, like setting up a clean architecture early, defining interfaces between components and avoiding last-minute integration issues. We also came in with a stronger presentation plan and a lot more confidence overall.”
This time, the team placed first at OEC, earning the opportunity to advance to CEC 2026, which was hosted by the Université de Sherbrooke from March 20–23.
“At CEC, the challenge was quite open-ended,” says Khan.
“They asked us to use augmented reality (AR) to support building inspectors and address real-world problems. Given the short timeline of only 8 hours, we focused on balancing ambition with execution.”
“We designed an AR solution where you point your phone around a room, see defect markers overlaid, track damage over time and collaborate with property owners,” says Jabbour.
“What really set us apart though was that we were the only team with true 3D AR, which is extremely hard to pull off on the web, alongside a web app with 2D AR. It was a gamble because we split the team in half, two on the web app and two on the 3D AR, knowing that if the 3D didn’t come together, the 2D project might not be enough. But it worked out.”
The team plans to keep the momentum going for the next UTEK event, set to take place in November 2026.
“Daniel and I will be the programming directors for UTEK this year, while Rafael will be the webmaster,” says Sidhu.
“Given our experience, we’re going to try our utmost to prepare and challenge the UTEK competitors in a way that will prepare them to go big and to show off the talent here at the University of Toronto.”
The team is also looking forward to 2028, when U of T is scheduled to play host to the provincial competition.
“After competing for two years, we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t,” says Jabbour.
“We proved this year that U of T can compete at the national level, and I don’t want that to be a one-off. It would be nice if we can build something that helps the next group of competitors feel more prepared and more supported.”
