Dawson College Science student Zhijian (Jian) Sun returned from Edmonton last week with a silver medal after competing at the Canada-Wide Science Fair.

“It was an incredibly busy and eventful week,” he said. “Competing, networking, and spending time alongside 400 of the smartest peers I’ve ever met was an extraordinary experience.”

In addition to the silver medal, awarded to the top 20 projects in Canada on May 28, Jian and his partner, Vanier College student Nu Kim Anh Ton, also received the Actuarial Foundation of Canada Special Award. The award recognizes a project that “demonstrates effective use of statistical analysis to investigate or solve a complex problem.”

Their project, ERGo, offers a promising solution to Quebec emergency room wait times. Jian noted that Quebec ERs are among the most overcrowded in the country: “I wanted to know: is there a smarter way to prioritize patients and reduce those wait times? The answer became ERGo.”

He describes the project as “a discrete-event simulation of an emergency room, modeled on the Royal Victoria Hospital using real provincial data from the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux (MSSS). It allows users to simulate an ER under different triage policies and measure outcomes such as wait times and patient flow. What makes it innovative is its ability to test policies that do not yet exist and quantify their impact in real time. This dynamic design also allows it to be integrated into a real clinical environment.”

Jian plans to continue developing the project: “This isn’t the end of the road. We have begun collaborating with clinical researchers at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), including Dr. Seth Davis, to further our research and hopefully bring ERGo into a real clinical setting.”

“Making it this far, step by step, on our first attempt at a science fair feels very surreal. We are beyond proud of the work we’ve done over the last six months, and we are extremely thankful to Dawson for its support from the very beginning,” Jian said.

Both Jian and his partner have also received entrance scholarships valued at $14,000 each from five universities across Canada.