Kiana Buciurca, Co-op Student of the Year, Bachelor of Engineering: My name is Kiana Buciurca I'm a fourth year biomedical engineering co-op student at the University of Guelph. At my last co-op term, I worked at Sonova. I was a software QA analyst.

Tom Kalbfleisch, Nominator, Sonova: Why I went ahead and nominated Kiana for student of the year was not just because of the work she brought to the team, but because of the completely new and different perspectives she brought every day to the team. And this was different than any student that we ever had.

Kiana: So, I led verification testing for the mobile applications. This included running various test cases. And I also wrote test cases myself.

Action: Kiana works on a laptop and an iPad.

Tom: I would describe Kiana as a hard worker. She thinks outside of the box and I have never met someone more driven.

Action: Kiana and Tom walk and talk. They collaborate on computer work.

Tom: Our translation testing is typically one that is very tedious. And in Kiana's case, she took that testing and she actually made it into something that rather than taking three weeks, it took about three days.

Kiana: I believe my biggest highlight in my experience at Sonova was earning the We Care Award, which was awarded to me at the company's town hall.

Tom: Working with Kiana day to day was actually really easy. With Kiana, she just landed and was able to take the job and run with it.

Kiana: What inspires me the most is to continue trying new things. Going into this role, I was nervous. Software coding or anything like that was completely new for me. and I really learned a lot about myself and how much I'm capable of.