EUGENE–Master of Business Administration (MBA) students from the Oregon Graduate Institute won the $15,000 grand prize at the national New Venture Competition hosted by the University of Oregon’s Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship.

The winning entry, ArtCentral.com, a new business venture organized by the student team, will establish a virtual gallery to connect interior designers and decorators with thousands of professional artists looking to sell their work.

A team from San Diego State University received $2,500 for its second-place entry, Functional Therapy Solutions. The student-organized company plans to market equipment that will provide physical therapists a broader range of data than is possible with current technology.

The third-place prize of $1,000 went to the University of Louisville student team for an Internet-based service that will help small-to-medium-sized companies locate the least expensive freight carriers to move their products.

The Louisville team also took home the $2,500 prize for best Internet business plan, provided by iSTART ventures, a Seattle company that operates a business start-up incubator for Internet-based entrepreneurs for e-commerce.

The University of Texas at Austin won $1,000 for the outstanding written business plan for Diligen Vioceutics, Inc., a biotech company that is working on a cure for lung cancer.

Judges selected MBA students from 19 universities as semi-finalists in the competition hosted annually by the UO’s Lundquist Center. The Oregon universities are the Oregon Graduate Institute of Technology, Beaverton; the University of Oregon, Eugene; and the University of Portland.

Semi-finalist universities in other states include the University of Arizona, Tucson; Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles; San Diego State University; Kennesaw State University, Marietta, Ga.; Indiana University, Bloomington; the University of Louisville in Kentucky; Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.; the University of Cincinnati; Case Western University, Cleveland, Ohio; Pennsylvania State University, University Park; the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; the University of Texas at Austin; and Baylor University, Waco, Texas.

International semi-finalist universities are Canada’s University of Manitoba, Winnipeg; Colombia’s Universidad Icesi; and Scotland’s Stirling University.

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