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The Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE)  announces the opening of its annual student poster competition. Graduate, undergraduate, community college and high school students are invited to submit abstracts on innovative composites technologies related to automotive and ground transportation. This competition is sponsored by Dassault Systèmes (Waltham, Mass., U.S.).

The competition will be held during the 25^th annual ACCE, taking place at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, Michigan, from Sept. 3-5, 2025. Judges — including industry experts, SPE board members and members of the media — will review all posters with student authors during the conference. Students entering the poster competition will also give a 5-minute mini-talk podium presentation on their poster topic in a special technical session.

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First, second, and third place awards will be presented to winners in graduate, undergraduate and high school categories during a ceremony, also taking place during the SPE ACCE conference. This year’s theme is “25 Years of Advancing Mobility with Composites Technologies.”

Poster titles and abstracts are due by July 31, 2025. Digital copies of posters are due by August 20, 2025, for pre-review by judges. Abstracts and digital copies of posters must be submitted online via the , which is also accessible via the “submit 2025 papers, presentations and posters here” button at the . Questions should be sent to Douglas_E_Smith@baylor.edu.

Student poster details

Poster topics may include, but are not limited to, subjects such as:

• Automotive composites
• Composites and lightweight materials for trucks
• Biocomposites
• Nanocomposites
• Glass, carbon and hybrid fibers
• Thermoset and thermoplastic technologies
• Recycling and green technologies
• Multi-materials
• Joining technologies
• Applications of composites in electric vehicles
• Modeling and analysis of lightweight materials
• CAFE standards and mandates
• Cost-effective manufacturing
• Use of advanced materials in innovative applications
• Virtual prototyping and design
• Microstructure, failure and fracture
• Failure envelopes and theories
• Additive manufacturing of composites
• Air mobility.

Students will need to bring 24 × 36-inch printed copies of their posters to the conference. Large, multi-poster panels and push pins for displaying the posters in the Student Poster Display area will be provided. The poster template can be located under “2025 ACCE poster competition template.”

All students presenting a poster in the competition will receive free

registration to the conference, and a shared hotel room provided by SPE ACCE. Students who submit abstracts and posters early will be provided with accommodations at the Hyatt Place hotel on-site at ACCE. The ACCE provides students with excellent networking opportunities especially ideal for those close to graduating who are starting to look for a job. 

Students and their posters are ranked using the following criteria:

• Content (student and poster demonstrate clarity of topic, objectives and background)
• Motivation for research and technical relevance to conference theme
• Methodology and approach to problem
• Quality of proposed research results/findings
• Conclusions are supported by information presented
• Presentation (display aesthetics are pleasing and there is a logical flow between sections)
• Knowledgeable (presenter has a good grasp of the subject)
• Understandability (poster is effective even without student being present to explain it); and
• Overall rank versus other posters and presenters.

The 2024 SPE ACCE student poster competition first place winners included  Hridyesh Tewani of the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and Philip McMorran from the University of Guelph. Read about them here.