The UWI team of O’Neil Grant, team leader, Sasha Ann Smith, Kirk Tyrell and Dawn Brooks returned to the island recently after being placed sixth in a field of 18 schools in the 2007 Opportunity Funding Corporation Venture Challenge (OFCVC) in Atlanta, Georgia. The team, Eso Innovators Ltd, had earlier won the UWI Venture Competition, an annual Business Plan Development and Presentation contest among UWI graduate groups organized by the Mona School of Business (MSB).

The OFCVC, spread over three days, is a business plan competition among Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) designed to assist black American students to convert their ideas into successful businesses.

UWI was the only non-American team at this year’s staging, which was won by Fayetteville State University. The Jamaicans advanced to the six-team final with their project, PDMS, a client-server application that employs several advanced technologies to revolutionize the petroleum industry.