SAIT student builds and pitches software to help predict environmental risk
“I fell into a sewer and it changed what I wanted to build.”
That’s how Sophia Perez, a second-year Software Development student in SAIT’s School for Advanced Digital Technology, opened her first ever business pitch.
Perez was a finalist in the Enactus Canada Early Stage Summer Program national competition, ultimately finishing third among a group of student teams from post-secondary institutions nationwide. The program is designed to support early- stage business ventures targeting social impact.
Perez serves as the Head of Research and Development for the SAIT chapter of Enactus, a global non-profit network of students and partners who create sustainable community development projects.
Perez built and pitched ForeSite, a software designed to help construction companies predict where erosion will occur on a building site to help prevent water pollution.
Connecting experience to entrepreneurship
“I wanted a project related to my life. So, I thought back to when I fell in the sewer — my family actually brings it up a lot,” she says with a smile.
When she was younger, Perez lived in an industrial city in the Philippines. She recalls there were a lot of active building projects nearby where she grew up.
“The sewers were basically holes in the ground with water in them. The water was disgusting. At the time, I didn’t think about why. Now I’m older, I know human activities, like construction, are the reason the water was so dirty.”
ForeSite doesn’t replace traditional monitoring or sensors, it builds a predictive layer so companies can focus their attention and money on high-risk areas and intervene before pollutants can reach the water, explains Perez.
Joining SAIT directly from high school, Perez just started the second year of her program. Her ForeSite project has also come a long way in a short period of time.
“I started the project in May but I had the idea even before that,” she says. “I like problem solving and I’m pretty interested in research. I wanted to do something software related, something impactful — and something that would allow me to try something I’ve never done before.”
ForeSite uses geographic data and AI to predict within minutes where erosion is likely to take place around a building site during a storm before it happens. By predicting these pathways, construction companies could target erosion prevention efforts to stop damaging particles before they reach the water while saving money.
First, she entered the project for Labs4 — a Canada-wide network of colleges and universities that supports research or entrepreneurship projects. SAIT is the Labs4 Southern Alberta Hub.
She received $10,000 and support through the Centre for Innovation and Research in Unmanned Systems (CIRUS) in SAIT’s Applied Research and Innovations Services Hub to help test her ForeSite predictions.
“I’m so excited to work in CIRUS,” she says. “Through Labs4 I intend to validate my predictions against real sensor data and prove the accuracy. I’m also looking into finding more pilot partners to have more validation and case studies to back up the project — and maybe I’ll get a customer.”
In the spring, Enactus SAIT will be entering ForeSite in another competition.
Support to lead and make a difference
For her first pitch, you could say Perez hit it out of the park.
But she’s quick to acknowledge all the help she received along the way.
“The first time I presented my script there were only two people there, and they said it was bad! But I got help from so many people — Enactus executive and alumni, and our faculty advisor. I rewrote the script, and then everyone said it was great.
“At the competition, I was the last person to do my pitch. I was waiting by myself in the Zoom breakout room and I was scared. But my team from Enactus was texting me the whole time telling me I was going to be okay. They were so supportive.”
As a software development student, Perez also appreciates the power of being exposed to how a business is built and run through her experience with Enactus SAIT.
“I’m in Software Development, so all I was really thinking when I started was, I’m just going to develop this, I’m just going to build it,” she says. “But through Enactus, I realized there’s lots more to a startup — you have to put so much into forming a business besides making the product.”
📺 Watch the pitch
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SAIT is located on the traditional territories of the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) and the people of Treaty 7 which includes the Siksika, the Piikani, the Kainai, the Tsuut’ina and the Îyârhe Nakoda of Bearspaw, Chiniki and Goodstoney.
We are situated in an area the Blackfoot tribes traditionally called Moh’kinsstis, where the Bow River meets the Elbow River. We now call it the city of Calgary, which is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta.