$2 million awarded in Rice competition

More than $2 million was awarded to participants in the 2018 Rice Business Plan Com- petition held Thursday through Saturday.

The winning team, Infinite Cooling from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, took home nearly $500,000 in cash and prizes. It bested 41 other team from universities around the world to win the annual event billed as the world's richest and largest student startup competition.

Infinite Cooling is a technology startup that uses electric fields to recover water from the evaporative losses of cooling towers so that the same water can be used repeatedly.

The second-place team was Lapovations from the University of Arkansas. It received $100,000 as the second-place prize and more than $50,000 in individual prizes. Lapovations is a medical device company focused on improving laparoscopy, a surgical procedure in which a fiber-optic instrument is used.

Third place was Aday Technologies from Harvard University. It received $200,000 in individual prizes. Aday is a workforce management tool that lets hourly workers schedule themselves, with the goal of fewer dropped shifts, less overtime and less turnover.

The competition is hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship and Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business.