Velocity company founder Jeremy Wang named Change Agent Entrepreneur

The Mitacs award was presented at its annual awards event at the University of Waterloo

Jeremy Wang (PhD '22) is a change agent entrepreneur.

The Mitcas award recognizes his efforts through his company Ribbit, co-founded with fellow aerospace engineer and pilot Carl Pigeon, which is developing self-flying planes to transport food and other necessities to communities and regions with limited or no road access.

“We actually started [Ribbit] because we are passionate about addressing issues with food insecurity,” Wang said.

Ribbit started working with Velocity in the fall of 2019, during its ideation stage. By April 2020 the company had incorporated and bought its first airplane. Within a year it had raised a pre-seed round.

And after only 14 months of operation, Ribbit completed Canada’s first hands-free gate-to-gate flight.

Read how Ribbit's and other Velocity companies' innovation is unstoppable

Ribbit is on track to start a commercial pilot project by the middle of next year and its ultimate goal is to rewire the transportation network to be faster, more efficient and more accessible to remote communities that currently don’t have reliable air transportation for necessities such as food and medicine, the company told Mitacs.

More about the Mitacs awards and other award recipients here.