Project SOY Plus
Project SOY Plus (Sustainable Opportunities for You) is an annual student competition that has been inspiring innovation and sustainability at the University of Guelph since 1996.
Open to students across all disciplines, degree/diploma levels, and campuses, the competition encourages participants to envision a more sustainable future through two streams: Project and Creative.
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How to Participate
Students can enter in one or both streams:
- Project Stream: Submit a project report describing a product or marketing concept aligned with the annual theme. Teams will present their concept at the competition finale.
- Creative Stream: Submit a written proposal for a creative work that responds to the annual theme (e.g., sculpture, painting, photography, film, poetry, music) along with a visual concept to help communicate the idea to the judges. Visuals may include a sketch, storyboard, poster, mock-up, etc.
- The first place winning proposal receives funding to develop the full creative work.
Why Compete?
- Build Your Skills: Strengthen your abilities in research, creativity, and public presentation
- Boost Your Resume: Add valuable experience to your portfolio
- Meet Your People: Connect with students who care about sustainability and innovation
- Grow Your Network: Engage with mentors, faculty, and industry professionals
- Win Prizes: Compete for cash awards and participation prizes
2026 Theme: Biodiversity by Design
Students are encouraged to develop ideas or artistic responses that explore one or more of the following challenge prompts:
- Unlock the potential of underused or diverse species
- Design of materials or tools that reduce land pressure (e.g., vertical farming, multi-use biobased materials or tools, habitat restoration)
- Create strategies, tools, or platforms that make biodiversity visible, measurable or traceable, including toolkits, educational platforms, digital tools, maps, or dashboards
Visit the Research Innovation SharePoint for more information on joining Project SOY Plus.
Faculty & Additional Opportunities
Students can apply as a Student Coordinator, an on-campus position that involves supporting the facilitation of the program and competition with the Research Innovation Office.
Faculty members also play an important role in the success of Project SOY Plus and are encouraged to get involved in one of the following ways:
- Integrate the competition into your course: Consider incorporating Project SOY Plus into your course as a project or assignment. This is a great opportunity to align course content with real-world, sustainability-focused challenges. Faculty interested in this option are invited to connect with a program administrator to explore how it can work within their curriculum.
- Serve as a faculty mentor: Faculty can also support the program by mentoring a student or team. Mentors provide guidance, feedback, and encouragement as students develop their project or creative concept throughout the competition.
Project SOY Plus Legacy
Project SOY Plus has been proud to partner with several innovative organizations throughout its history. Launched in 1996, the program was initially driven by the soybean industry to support student research and innovation within the sector. Since then, Project SOY Plus has expanded its partnerships, underscoring our community's commitment to a sustainable future. These collaborations explore new product and market opportunities while nurturing a future workforce equipped to tackle challenges head-on.
Thank you to Food from Thought for funding the 2026 competition.
Past Winners
Project Stream
Creative Stream
Commissions
Looking Inside
Verena Brysch, 2025
Triptych: recycled cardboard panels, repurposed or Canadian acrylic paint | 96×59 cm, 90×52 cm, 68×83 cm
Recycled wood frames made by Erin Stewart
Looking Inside is about perspective.
The eye is our strongest sensory organ, responsible for almost 80% of how we interpret the world. Yet, what we see through our eyes is not always the whole story; it is only one side of the story. Where a human eye sees bags of almonds stacked neatly in a grocery store, a bee sees something else entirely: a monoculture stretching to the horizon, their colony weakened and dying from the pesticides and lack of flower variety. The same almond, the same harvest, but a completely different story. This difference in perspective is what this piece is about.
This work responds to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals #2 (Zero Hunger) and #15 (Life on Land.) Laws and policies can guide us, but they are not the entire solution. Lasting change requires something far more difficult to achieve: a shift in the way our society functions. And that society is built by our actions and perspectives. In this work, the human eyes reflect the abundance of grocery aisles stocked year-round, fast food available at our fingertips and rows of cheap new houses. On the opposite side, other species reveal the hidden cost. The hawk sees the landfill from the overabundance, the deer sees the raw scars of a clear-cut forest, the turtle sees the plastic that has replaced beautiful coral reefs. These contrasts ask us to consider our perspectives on everything around us, because perspective guides action, and action drives change. Buying apples from a nearby orchard in autumn instead of strawberries flown in from California mid-winter, repairing clothes rather than buying new ones, and resisting unnecessary excess are the choices with the power to change society.
The materials chosen reflect these values: the canvas is discarded cardboard collected from a local appliance store, the frames made from recycled wood, and the paints were repurposed or locally made in Ontario. What may have been wasted, instead, became art. This piece is both a message and an example.
To see both sides of the works, the viewer must walk around it. That movement is intentional. It mirrors the effort it takes to shift our perspective. Often the products that make our lives easier fail to tell the whole story, from the short lifespans of cheaply made goods and buildings, the insects lost to pesticide-laden flowers, the landscapes scarred by excess waste. Seeing the full story requires work, but it’s only through effort that we can become part of the solution.
In the end, Looking Inside is not just painted eyes, it is an invitation.
Look inside yourself. What do you see? What choices did you make today that shaped the world around you? What choices will you make tomorrow?
“Looking Inside” was the winning 2025 Project SOY Plus Creative Stream proposal, commissioned by the University of Guelph, Research Innovation Office.
