A University of Waterloo graduate was among the 298 people killed Thursday when a passenger airplane was shot down over Ukraine.
Andrei Anghel, 24, was identified Friday as the lone Canadian on board Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.
The Ajax resident graduated from Waterloo in 2012 with a degree in biomedical science.
Now attending medical school in his native Romania, he was travelling to Bali aboard MH17, which was heading from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
Also on the plane was his girlfriend, who he had met in Romania.
Waterloo immunology professor Brian Dixon said Anghel was a “very keen student” who had more on his mind than getting a good grade.
“A lot of students want to get the mark and that’s it, but he really wanted to … get the knowledge,” he said.
“I can still picture him in the second row with his hand up, asking questions.”
Family members said they were notified of Anghel’s death by police at their home.
"Everybody who knew him know that he was a very, very kind, very, very, very good person," father Sorin Anghel said.
According to Anghel’s personal website, he also volunteered at a retirement home in Waterloo.
Also on MH17 were at least 189 Dutch passengers, 29 Malaysians, 28 Australians, 12 Indonesians, nine Britons, four Germans, four Belgians, three Filipinos and one person each from New Zealand and Hong Kong, while two passengers’ nationalities remained to be confirmed.
A large contingent of passengers were scientists on their way to an AIDS conference in Australia.
U.S. officials have said the plane was downed by a surface-to-air missile while traversing a portion of eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists.
In a statement, Prime Minister Stephen Harper called Canada willing to assist the investigation into the crash and expressed shock and sadness about the tragedy.
With files from The Canadian Press
