Love's Entrepreneur's Cup winners headed to Vegas, baby!

Business leaders, educators and students came together Thursday night to celebrate winners of the Love's Entrepreneur's Cup competition, presented by i2E in Oklahoma City. It's a business competition in which teams of college students conceptualize, produce and present a real-life product or service that gets scrutinized and judged by a panel of business experts and real-life investors.

The competition is more than a contest. It's an opportunity to start a venture that can have a large impact on people in need and the community at large.

There were three first-place winners: VisuALS from Oklahoma Christian Universityin the small business division, VisionaRX from Oklahoma State University in the high-growth undergraduate division and Composite Damage Solutions from the University of Tulsa in the high-growth graduate division.

Love's Vice President of Communications with OC's winning team, VisuALS.

VisionaRX, the winning team from Oklahoma State University in the high-growth undergraduate division. Led by Jacquelyn Lane, VisionaRX is developing a noninvasive ocular drug delivery platform technology composed of a membrane embedded with drug-loaded nanoparticles to be mounted on a blank contact lens and worn by a patient for a number of days. This venture would help people who suffer from diabetic retinopathy, a complication of diabetes that affects the eyes.

We caught up with Lane and teammates Rachel Davis and Chance Imhoff backstage after their big win at the Chevy Bricktown Events Center. They were excited about winning to say the least, and they knew precisely what a victory meant for their team.

We also chatted with Matthew Faeth and Travis McClanahan with Composite Damage Solutions, the first-place winner in the high-growth graduate division. Michael Keller advised this UT team. Their project centered on a solution injected into composite material, such as on aircrafts, to detect damage.

For more information and highlights from this year's Love's Entrepreneur's Cup, visit i2E's Facebook page. (link: https://www.facebook.com/OKLovesCup/)

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