School of Pharmacy Faculty Member Wins Third Place in Oxford Pitch Contest
Competition is qualifying event for entrepreneurial accelerator program
OXFORD, Miss. — Brenton Laing, a School of Pharmacy faculty member, took third place in the 5th Annual Oxford Pitch Contest held in June at the Oxford Conference Center. The Top Three finish in the High-Growth Innovation & Technology Track came with a $1,000 prize.
Laing, assistant professor of Pharmacology and Research, assistant professor in the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and affiliate assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering, collaborated with Ole Miss student Garrett Bradham, who is pursuing a graduate degree biomedical engineering at the university.
“I’ve had an idea for an app for years, and we began developing this one last summer,” Laing said. “We were excited to present our project at the competition, and it was encouraging to be recognized for our work.”
The pair represented Interbeat Industries, which was co-founded by Laing and Bradham, develops games and mobile training apps that utilize continuous heart rate data and built-in physiological biofeedback to improve user focus, precision, and coordination.
The competition, sponsored by Oxford Lafayette Incorporated (OLinc) and Innovate Mississippi, is a qualifying event for the Innovate Mississippi's CoBuilders Accelerator program for high-potential startup companies.
Laing and Bradham have collaborated with the Small Business Development Center at Ole Miss to perfect their pitches and get performance evaluations, and in April they won the W. Thomas Colbert-Community Bank Innovators award, sponsored by the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
By
James Dowd
Campus
Office, Department or Center
Published
July 13, 2026