Rose-Hulman Students Place Among North America’s Best in Battery Workforce Challenge

A team of Rose-Hulman students, partnering with students from Ivy Tech Community College, finished among the top three teams in the Battery Workforce Challenge.

TERRE HAUTE, IN, UNITED STATES, June 4, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- A team of Rose-Hulman students, in partnership with students from Ivy Tech Community College, finished among the top three teams in North America in the prestigious Battery Workforce Challenge, a three-year advanced electric vehicle battery design competition sponsored by Stellantis and the U.S. Department of Energy.

The team tied for third place in the final year of the competition, alongside the University of Alabama and Shelton State Community College team. The Ohio State University and Columbus State Community College team earned first-place honors.

Managed by Argonne National Laboratory in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy and sponsored by Stellantis, the Battery Workforce Challenge brought together 11 university and vocational school partnerships from across North America to design, build, test, and integrate an advanced electric vehicle battery pack for a Ram ProMaster EV commercial van platform.

Rose-Hulman/Ivy Tech was one of just 11 North American partnerships selected to participate in the competition.

Over the course of the competition, the Rose-Hulman team consistently distinguished itself against programs largely staffed by graduate and doctoral students. In contrast, Rose-Hulman’s effort was driven primarily by undergraduate students from a wide range of STEM disciplines.

“This achievement reflects the talent, dedication, and collaborative spirit of our students and faculty over the past three years,” said Robert A. Coons, president of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. “The Battery Workforce Challenge provided an extraordinary opportunity for students to apply classroom knowledge to complex, real-world engineering challenges while gaining valuable industry experience in one of the fastest-growing sectors of technology. Competing at this level and earning top honors against outstanding universities across North America is a remarkable accomplishment.”

In the competition’s final year, teams finalized battery pack designs, studied packaging trade-offs, and developed manufacturing supply strategies while meeting demanding engineering and safety standards established by industry professionals.

Along with its third-place overall finish, the Rose-Hulman/Ivy Tech team earned the competition’s “Over the HIL” software award for developing a bench-test platform that ensured proper communications within the battery pack system through Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing.

Students also designed and executed the battery pack’s control system, which successfully passed all required testing during the final competition evaluations on its first attempt.

The team’s strong final showing capped three years of consistent success. During the first year of competition, the team earned fifth place overall along with awards for project initiation planning and technical design presentations. In year two, the team advanced to third place overall while earning honors for module integrity, geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, and technical communications.

Throughout the project, students designed, assembled, integrated, and tested nearly every component of the battery system, gaining hands-on experience that mirrors the work performed by engineers in the rapidly growing electric vehicle industry.

The challenge also provided students with direct exposure to automotive and battery industry leaders while creating pathways to internships and careers in electric vehicle and battery technology fields. Participating students have secured internships and full-time positions with companies including Stellantis, Samsung, and Texas Instruments.

Rose-Hulman’s effort was led by faculty advisors Zac Chambers, PhD, Marc Herniter, PhD, and Nathan Brooks, PhD, alongside faculty and staff collaborators from multiple disciplines. Students from Rose-Hulman programs, including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer engineering, computer science, chemistry, chemical engineering, engineering design, physics, and software engineering, participated throughout the project.

The Battery Workforce Challenge was built upon Rose-Hulman’s long-standing tradition of participation in advanced vehicle and energy competitions, including ChallengeX, EcoCAR, and EcoCAR2.

Paul Shepherd
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
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