Growing up near Ottawa, Angéline Lafleur never thought there was anything unusual about girls being interested in engineering.
The daughter of engineers, her curiosity was sparked by her parents and she attended many STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) camps when she was a kid. It was only later that she saw it wasn't always considered typical.
"As a teenager I saw that, hey, a lot of my girlfriends that also liked engineering, they were kind of being discouraged from pursuing this field," Lafleur said.
Once she ultimately decided that electrical engineering was the field for her, after considering other options, Lafleur sometimes found it can be a lonely journey.
"In electrical engineering, it's still very male dominated," Lafleur said. "In many of my classes, there were only one or two girls other than me. It's something that I just in some ways accepted and dealt with, but I don't want others to have to face that. With fewer women in the field, a lot of people end up wanting to pit (us) against each other ... to be the token woman."
But Lafleur, who got her undergrad at the University of Ottawa and is now doing a PhD at the University of Waterloo, won't be alone much longer.
On Monday, she will be inducted into a special sisterhood, Polytechnique Montréal's Order of the White Rose, which offers a $50,000 scholarship for women in engineering, in memory of the 14 murdered in a mass shooting on Dec. 6, 1989 because they were women.
Lafleur will be one of 14 received into the fold -- up from one for the first time this year -- as Polytechnique dramatically expands the program for both symbolic and practical reasons.
Maud Cohen, president of Polytechnique Montréal, explained that the idea is to create a group of "exceptional" women to support each other as they reach for their dreams in a field still dominated by men.
"Creating this cohort of leadership will support them in being leaders in the future roles that they choose," Cohen said.
On Sunday, the 14 met for the first time, hopefully forging lifelong bonds as leaders in their shared profession. On Monday, they will be honoured in a moving ceremony where Lafleur, a bilingual Franco-Ontarian, will speak for the group.
"I'm just really first of all excited to meet them and hear their stories," Lafleur said in an interview last week. "I'm sure all of us come from very different backgrounds, have faced different challenges, and I want to learn from them some of the issues they faced in their communities, and how they decided to approach it, and what was their impact for women in engineering. ... And then as well, with so many people in the sisterhood, there's bound to be some overlap in specific fields of work. So maybe some cool collaborations could stem from us meeting (through the) Order of the White Rose."
The 14 new members of the order are:
Rabab Azeem, computer engineering, Queen's University
Azeem is dedicated to ensuring artificial intelligence is used for the common good, especially for improving health care.
While attending high school in Barrie, Ont., she looked at how protein data could assist in detecting genetic diseases. When she graduated, Azeem won the prestigious Schulich Leader Scholarship in 2020, awarding her $100,000 to study engineering at Queen's.
There, she explored how AI could be deployed to improve medical imaging using generative models.
In 2024, she was named a Cansbridge Fellow, which allowed her to spend a summer in South Korea doing an internship focusing on improving the efficiency and sustainability of AI models.
Azeem is now doing a master's in industrial engineering at the University of Toronto, where she is exploring applications for AI in health care.
Megan Chang, mechatronics engineering, University of Waterloo
Since childhood, Chang has dreamed of being a pilot, which has led to her research interest in flight and space.
In 2023, she won the Hamilton International Airport RCAF Foundation Scholarship, which supports the next generation of aviation and aerospace leaders.
Last year, Chang was part of a team from Waterloo that participated in the Canadian Space Agency's microgravity competition, running an experiment to see whether solder joints on aircraft can be improved using a centrifuge.
For her 2025 capstone engineering project, Chang's team worked on a soft robotic glove designed to help stroke patients improve hand grasp.
Chang is also accomplished in martial arts and rowing.
In the next few years, Chang wants to pursue a degree in electrical and computer engineering focused on aviation and defence.
Grace Ciarniello, physical engineering, University of Alberta
As a girl, Ciarniello used her own money to buy a microscope so she could examine grains of sand, inspiring her eventual study of nanotechnologies.
She won the Governor General's Academic Medal when she graduated high school in Victoria, B.C.
At the U of A, she has been involved in the STARR program, designing and launching sounding rockets, as well as mentoring younger female students in STEM.
She is now doing her master's in microsystems and nanodevices.
Marie-Ève Fecteau, biomedical engineering, Polytechnique Montréal
The first time Fecteau walked in the doors of Polytechnique for an open house, she knew this was where she belonged.
With a belief in "engineering in service of humanity," Fecteau's studies led her to develop orthotics for youth with scoliosis.
She worked with the research chair in orthopedic engineering at CHU Ste-Justine and won the Prix Jean-Dansereau for her efforts seeking to make life easier for children with mobility issues.
Fecteau did an exchange to École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne.
She was also one of the winners of Polytechnique Montréal's Bourses de Vinci this year.
Fecteau is committed to inspiring the next generation of engineers. She has been an ambassador for GéniElles and a counsellor for Poly's Folie technique summer camp, programs that seek to inspire girls and underprivileged youth to pursue engineering.
Ashna Jain, industrial engineering, University of Toronto
At age 12, Jain won a prize for designing a special bicycle to help people in Tanzania transport water.
At 13, she came up with a concept to help people in India filter water through transpiration, the natural process by which plants absorb moisture through their roots and release it as vapour.
Her love of travel has taken her to more than 80 countries where she is eager to make a difference.
At 17, Jain was awarded a $110,000 national scholarship to study engineering at the University of Toronto.
She once told Guelph Today: "Career-wise, my goal is just to develop sustainable systems to combat global issues using engineering principles."
In 2024, Jain spent time in Mexico doing research on using anaerobic digesters in rural farming communities for the Reach Alliance.
She also helped design low-cost incubators for premature babies in the Philippines.
Earlier this year, she was one of those recognized with University of Toronto Student Leadership Awards. She is pursuing her master's at U of T so she can help vulnerable people around the world.
Catherine Ko, biomedical engineering, University of Calgary
Ko's passion for engineering is driven by her desire to find solutions for the world's pressing problems.
In 2022, her team of U of C students took home the gold medal and Best Sustainable Development Impact award at the International Genetically Engineered Machine's (iGEM) Grand Jamboree competition in Paris for their project developing an alternative to plastic packaging that preserves perishable foods to cut down on waste.
She did an internship at BlueRock Therapeutics, where she worked on how stem cells might be used in the treatment of diabetes, and has sought to optimize the engineering of T cells for immunotherapy.
Ko also volunteered with Go Baby Go, an organization that conceives technologies for children with mobility challenges.
"As a female student in the Schulich School of Engineering (at the U of C), I think it is important to actively promote diversity through student opportunities by removing barriers that exist for under-represented groups. Despite those barriers, I would encourage young women engineering students to not become limited and to use their strengths to bring about change," she said in 2023.
Earlier this year, Ko was among the recipients of the Ivan Finlay Leadership Award, for engineering or geoscience students who strive for inclusive leadership and equity in their campus or community activities.
Ko is now pursuing a master's at UBC focused on applications for stem cells and genetics.
Samantha Krieg, civil engineering, University of British Columbia Okanagan
Krieg wasn't always convinced engineering was for her. She first enrolled in culinary school at George Brown College in Toronto and worked as a cook in high-end restaurants for several years before deciding to change paths. She eventually made her way to engineering, following in the footsteps of her mother.
With a focus on structural engineering and the building sector, Krieg has participated in many competitions as part of UBCO's design team. In 2022, her team placed second for creating a fire-resistant and energy-efficient home in Lytton, B.C., after a wildfire devastated the town.
In the summer of 2023, she worked as a research assistant on a project developing techniques for earthquake resilience.
"The best part of being a woman in engineering is the community and support from other women in STEM," she told her university. "We are beginning to break down these gender stereotypes and biases by supporting each other and being unapologetically proud women in engineering."
Krieg's path may have been unconventional, but she graduated top of her class at UBCO. She is now pursuing her doctorate in structural engineering at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
Angéline Lafleur, electrical engineering, University of Ottawa
A proud Franco-Ontarian who grew up in Ottawa, Lafleur's passion for language prompted her to post a video of herself in 2017 learning the Korean alphabet in five minutes. It went viral, igniting a long interaction with South Korea and its culture. She has even participated in a voice competition singing traditional Korean music.
At age 20, Lafleur became the first international undergraduate student to do an internship at the Center for Quantum Nanoscience in Seoul.
In high school, Lafleur used her linguistic skills to help teachers in francophone schools create a French curriculum for Ontario's new coding program. She also went into classrooms to spread her love of STEM.
Lafleur is now doing her PhD at the University of Waterloo.
"The specific technology that I'll be working on during my PhD is the standard for the unit (of) one volt. So when we're working with new technologies, all our computer chips and stuff are getting smaller and smaller. And with these new research fields, you're working with really small signals. So we need to be able to calibrate and have really good precision in measurements," she said. "I'll be developing a device that will realize the exact definition of one volt. ... If you have a battery that says one volt, it's only precise to some digits."
Brooke MacNeil, computer engineering, Queen's University
MacNeil discovered her passion for engineering through Go ENG Girl workshops at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa. She believed so fully in their mission, she later ran activities there for other young women.
During her time at Queen's, MacNeil was part of the university's biomedical innovation team, where she helped design an inflatable helmet that uses algorithms to detect falls in the elderly and volunteered with the local chapter of Robogals North America.
She also managed to maintain an almost perfect grade point average.
When she finished her undergrad in June, she was awarded the medal in computer engineering along with the Zurbrigg Memorial Scholarship, the NSERC Canada Graduate Research Scholarship, the H. Arnold Cowan Scholarship and the George Thomas Warren Scholarship in Computer Engineering.
MacNeil is in the Queen's accelerated master's degree program researching compensation detection in rehabilitation robotics, which she hopes will help stroke patients.
Marissa Myhre, aerospace engineering, York University
Growing up in the countryside around Surrey, B.C., spurred Myhre's fascination with the stars and space.
She also confesses to having a "mischievous" streak. Being expelled from boarding school in Grade 11 and entering a youth recovery program at age 16 became turning points in her life, according to the biography she posted on her website.
As she rebuilt her life, Myhre's love of the stars brought her to York University's space engineering program, where she has thrived while pursuing her goals.
She is a member of the ESSENCE CubSat team, working on a miniature satellite that can be a stand-alone unit or stacked to create a multi-unit apparatus.
Myhre has also held a research position at York's nanosatellite lab, where she is developing software for star trackers included in the payload of a Canadian Space Agency-funded stratospheric balloon mission.
In her free time, Myhre is a skydiving instructor, and she has worked at the Chrysalis Society as a mentor for women recovering from addiction.
"Throughout my life, I have encountered numerous doubters, and while I never really had a specific person I could call my inspiration, I can confidently say that all those doubters became my inspiration in their own way," Myhre said. "Their skepticism motivated me to become a space engineer because I wanted to and because I found the motivation within myself."
Kaitlyn Root, biological engineering, University of Guelph
Root's studies in engineering have been focused on creating a more sustainable planet.
At Guelph, she has worked at the Bioproducts Discovery and Development Centre, investigating home-compostable bioplastics.
She was a member of Guelph's gold medal-winning team at the 2025 iGEM Grand Jamboree in Paris, where they developed a biofilter to remove lead from water in household and industrial settings.
Her graduating project looked at how to remove pharmaceutical contaminants from wastewater, earning her a Helen Grace Tucker Prize.
Root has volunteered with the Ontario Nature Youth Council, demonstrating her commitment to the environment and sustainable development. She is also an accomplished fencer, scoring the best individual result for her team at the 2023 Ontario University Athletics Championships.
Root is now doing a master's investigating the use of milk residues to make microbial batteries as a form of green energy.
Hanna Sigurdson, biomedical engineering, University of Toronto
With her final year of high school in Edmonton disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Sigurdson was named Old Scona Academic's valedictorian and secured a Schulich Leader Scholarship to pursue her degree in biomedical engineering at U of T.
"Don't let this challenging time diminish what you have accomplished, or inhibit you from exploring your dreams. We have the world of opportunity ahead of us, waiting to be explored. Now is our time to take advantage of it," she told CBC at the time.
Coming from a family of engineers, the profession came naturally to Sigurdson. But her belief that the future of health care rests on innovation has inspired her to take an interdisciplinary approach to her studies, which focus on the intersection of engineering and medicine.
Sigurdson has worked on projects in biorobotics and cultivating artificial tissues for possible transplant. Her research has taken her abroad, to Switzerland and the United States.
She has led basketball teams and promoted varsity sports. She has also been an advocate for diversity in engineering, especially for women and non-binary people.
Sigurdson is now doing her PhD at Harvard University in the cutting-edge domain of microrobotics.
Angela Wang, biomedical engineering, McGill University
After meeting a man with locked-in syndrome -- a rare neurological disorder where there is complete paralysis of most voluntary muscles, but cognitive function is intact -- who used his eyes to communicate, Wang became interested in technologies that can help people with serious limitations do things that most people take for granted.
This became her focus while studying at McGill. She developed a tool to connect the brains of non-verbal people to a computer to help them communicate, and another to help children with mobility issues participate in music therapy.
Outside the lab, Wang coached swimming for the Special Olympics and mentored women from diverse backgrounds in STEM.
While at McGill, she was the events co-ordinator of the Society of Women Engineers.
Wang is now doing her master's at UBC.
Ruth Yu, biomedical engineering, University of British Columbia
During her time at UBC, Yu was involved in Engineers Without Borders and the university's BIOMOD student engineering design team. Their project, designing DNA bio-structures to deliver T-cell immunotherapy, won a gold medal at a competition in Japan in 2024.
For her capstone project, she developed a low-cost wearable device to monitor muscular spasms in patients suffering from tetanus.
Yu spent the summer in Hong Kong doing an internship at a biomedical instrumentation centre before starting her master's at UBC in the fall.
"Community isn't just something people talk about; it grounds you while giving you the confidence to lead, connect with others and explore new interests," she recently said.