Cyrus Shuttle
Ottawa / Kingston, Ontario
01 — About
About
I grew up in Ottawa speaking English and going to school in French at École secondaire publique De La Salle, a public arts school where I studied visual arts and tutored math. This fall I’m moving down the road to Kingston to start my engineering degree at Queen’s University, hoping to specialize in mechatronics.
Mostly, I like to build. The projects page has the particulars but the short version is that if I think something can be made, I’d rather do it myself and make it than buy it off the shelf.
You’ll also find me working towards my pilot’s licence at the Rockcliffe Flying Club, learning to fly one slightly-better landing at a time.
I carry a camera most places. And I have stronger opinions about mechanical pencils than anyone reasonably should.
02 — Projects
Projects
Things I’ve actually built — with the photos, data, and code to show for it.
EcoCoil — a compact electrostatic precipitator for PM2.5 pollution
I co-founded EcoCoil in October 2024. We build compact electrostatic precipitators — devices that pull fine particulate pollution (PM2.5) out of the air.
I built our functional prototype: modelled the enclosure in Blender, 3D-printed it, mounted the high-voltage transformers inside, and wired the unit to a power supply. Measured with an air-quality sensor, it cut PM2.5 levels by more than 80%.
In 2025, EcoCoil placed second out of more than 1,600 entries worldwide in the Oxford Saïd Global Climate Change Challenge.
2nd of 1,600+ entries worldwide · Oxford Saïd Global Climate Change Challenge, 2025
An 8-bit computer, one breadboard at a time
Following Ben Eater’s design, I assembled a working 8-bit computer from TTL logic chips: ALU, registers, program counter, RAM, clock, and control logic, all connected over a shared bus. Building it — and debugging it — is the closest I’ve come to watching a CPU think.
Currently
Working through Harvard’s CS50 — presently in the C section: control flow, scope, conditionals. I write C, Python, SQL, R, JavaScript, and LaTeX.
03 — Visual Arts
Visual Arts
Photography, painting, and sculpture — made in Ottawa, and soon in Kingston.
I spent six years as a visual arts student at De La Salle, Ottawa’s public arts high school. Most of what I know about looking at things carefully, I learned there.
In 2023, a three-dimensional piece of mine won the junior prize at the City of Ottawa’s Young at Art.
Painting and drawing came first, and they haven’t stopped.
These days the camera gets most of my attention. I photograph around Ottawa, Kingston and anywhere else I might be. Some of it is planned, most of it not.
In 2022 I got recruited to make a stop-motion animation and video for Enriched Bread Artists, an artist-run creative studio in Ottawa. There, I learned a lot about the tools professionals actually use: Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Pro. It taught me valuable skills in software that shaped nearly all my future projects.
04 — Awards
Awards
- 2026
Schulich Leader Nominee
De La Salle's sole nominee for the Schulich Leader Scholarships — one student per school, for STEM.
- 2025
Oxford Global Climate Challenge Runner-Up
2nd of 1,600+ teams worldwide, with Team EcoCoil — University of Oxford, Saïd Business School.
- 2025
University of Toronto National Book Award
School recipient.
- 2025
Queen's University Chancellor's Scholarship Nominee
- 2023
Young at Art, Junior Winner
City of Ottawa, for a three-dimensional piece.
05 — Contact
Get in touch
Whether it’s about engineering, EcoCoil, a photograph, or something else entirely — I’d like to hear from you.
- Emailcyrusshuttle1@gmail.com
- LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/cshuttle ↗
- GitHubgithub.com/cshuttle1 ↗