One of the world's largest startup competitions just got larger. Rice University revealed the 42 student-led teams from around the world that will be competing for more than $1.5 million in prizes this spring. Of the 42, two are from Houston universities — Curenav from University of Houston and LilySpec from Rice University.

The 19th annual Rice Business Plan Competition will take place from April 4 to 6 at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business.

"The true measure of success for the Rice Business Plan Competition is the number of teams that launch, raise funding and go on to succeed in their business," says Brad Burke, managing director of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship at Rice University, in a release. "The competition has served as the launch pad for a great number of successful entrepreneurial ventures, and the success rate far exceeds the national average."

According to the release, a group of judges whittled down over 300 applications across in four categories: life sciences, medical devices, and digital health; digital, information technology, and mobile; energy, clean technology, and sustainability; and other innovations, investment opportunity.

A different set of 275 judges will review the business plans of the finalists for the competition. The organization has a new application, judging, and scoring system, which was created by Houston-based Poetic, a business tech company.

Here's some of the prizes that are on the line for these finalists, according to the release:

• $100,000 Cisco Global Problem Solver prize
• $350,000 Investment Grand Prize from The GOOSE Society of Texas
• $100,000 OWL Investment Prize
• $100,000 Houston Angel Network Investment Prize
• $100,000 TiE Investment Prize
• $50,000 NASA Space Exploration Innovation Award
• $125,000 second place prize from Finger Interests, Anderson Family Fund and Greg Novak of Novak Druce
• $25,000 nCourage Courageous Women Entrepreneur Prize
• $25,000 Women's Health and Wellness Prize awarded by Sandi Heysinger and Dick Williams
• $25,000 Texas Business Hall of Fame Prize
• $25,000 Texas Medical Center Accelerator, TMCx, Prizes, plus a guaranteed spot in their accelerator.
• $20,000 Pearland Economic Development Corporation Prize
• $100,000 Texas Halo Fund Investment Prize
• $50,000 Pediatric Device Prize
• The winner of the grand prize will ring the closing bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York.

The fan favorite can also take home a prize. The fourth annual People's Choice Competition is officially open for voting on Facebook.

Over 210 former RBPC competitors are still in business — with 25 being acquired‚ and have raised over a cumulative $2.2 billion in capital and created more than 3,000 new jobs, according to the release.

These are the 42 companies facing off in this year's awards:

• EnKoat — Arizona State University
• Crystal Sonic — Arizona State University
• Flux Marine — Boston University
• Formally — Brown University
• Tarseer — Carnegie Mellon University
• Delta Band — Carnegie Mellon University
• Colonai — Columbia University
• Incite Analytics — Cornell University
• Neutroelectric — Dartmouth College
• Chord — Harvard University and MIT
• Modulus — Housing Solutions IIT Madras (India)
• Treyetech — Johns Hopkins University
• Avesta76 — Johns Hopkins University
• Zilper Trenchless — Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• AeroShield — Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Vita Inclinata Technologies — Mitchell Hamline School of Law
• BetterLife — Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)
• Sunthetics — New York University
• Rhaeos — Northwestern University
• Odin Technologies — Northwestern University
• RagnaRock Geo — Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
• Hearth Labs — Princeton University
• LilySpec — Rice University
• PL Biosciences RWTH — Aachen University (Germany)
• NABACO — Texas State University
• Embryologic — University of California, Irvine
• MiVUE — UCLA
• Tutorfly — UCLA
• Vascugenix — University of Arkansas at Little Rock
• Respira Labs — University of California, Berkeley
• AC Biode — University of Cambridge (United Kingdom)
• Beltech — University of Chicago
• BrewBike — University of Chicago and Northwestern University
• Curenav — University of Houston
• Speeko — University of Iowa
• Calcium Solutions — University of Michigan
• Dough — University of Michigan
• dermadiagnostics — University of Notre Dame
• Resonado — University of Notre Dame
• Heart I/O — University of Pittsburgh
• HRG Infrastructure Monitoring — University of Victoria (Canada)
• Astrolabe Analytics — University of Washington