The Spark Challenge

The Spark Challenge is a campus-wide, corporate-sponsored design competition, hosted by the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in partnership with the ECE Student Society and our Corporate Partners.

The Spark Challenge is open to all undergraduate students of Purdue University. It allows students of any discipline to present their projects to the rest of campus and many corporate sponsors. This results in networking with representatives from some of the top leading industries in the nation, acting as a gateway to prospective employers.

This event is the chance for students from any and all majors to collaborate in developing various projects and show off their technical skills.

Spring 2026 Event

Indianapolis

Date: April 29th
Location: EL Atrium
Times:

  • Setup + Team Check-in: 9:30 AM - 10:00 AM
  • Main Event: 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM
  • Award Ceremony: 2:30 PM

West Lafayette

Date: April 30th and May 1st
Location: Bill & Shirely Rice Design Studio, MSEE
Times:

  • Setup + Team Check-in: 8:00 AM - 8:30 AM
  • Main Event: 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
  • Awards Ceremony: 4:30 PM (only on May 1st)

Looking to Enter?

Deadline: Monday, April 20th

Guidelines to Enter:

A Team Captain should register the entire team along with each team member's name, email. and t-shirt size. Teams are expected to have at lease one representative present at all times with preferably all members being present for thier judging time. Becuase of this, each time will also be asked to identify which day works best for their team as well as times they will not all be present for judging.

Due to popularity of the event and requests from various other students outside of senior design, the Spark Challenge will now have three categories of entries with a first place prize for each category.  These categories are
1) Senior Design
2) Course Project
3) Student Organization & Individual Projects.
 
If you are interested in participating in the Spark Challenge in any of these categories, please complete the application at the below link, and while spaces for each are limited we will do our best to accommodate all applicants.
 
Sign Up Link: https://purdue.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eD9UtoVaXhRrvNj
 
We look forward to seeing all of you at these events and show off our wonderful ECE accomplishments!