MHI, CICMHE Name Competition Winners

MHI and The College-Industry Council on Material Handling Education (CICMHE) have recognized the winners of the 2025-2026 Material Handling Capstone Design Competition.

The competition celebrates innovative material handling solutions while fostering student interest in the material handling industry as a rewarding career path.

The 2025-2026 Material Handling Capstone Design Competition celebrates innovative material handling solutions while fostering student interest in the material handling industry as a rewarding career path.

For the 2025-2026 competition, six different schools submitted a combined total of 11 entries. The submissions were evaluated by a set of industry and academic judges based on:

• Project complexity and outcome success
• Creativity in addressing the problem
• Potential impact/contribution to the material handling industry
• Quality of the deliverables
• Effective communication of the problem, approach, design, and results

We are pleased to announce the following winners:

First Place Winner ($3,000)

• Georgia Tech & Wellstar Health System: Improving Operations at Wellstar’s Consolidated Service Center
• Student Team Members: Junwon Min, Eric Baw, Sujan Ganesh Kumar, MacKenzie Hulsey, Nano Suresettakul, Aron Cheng, Alka Rao, and Patrick Tangente
• Faculty Advisors: Drs. Gunter Sharp and Ying Laura Li

Second Place Winner ($2,000)

• California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo & Cal Poly Microfabrication Laboratory: Cal Poly Microfabrication Laboratory Facility Layout Redesign
• Student Team Members: Finnegan Wallace, Darin Gong, Leah Perez, Cooper Hayashi, and Logan Bell
• Faculty Advisor: Dr. Mohamed Awwad

Third Place Winner ($1,000) 

• University of Oklahoma & BOSCH: Dynamic Nesting Value Stream Evaluation
• Student Team Members: Kaden Holt, Ralford Mullings, and Lucas Edwards
• Faculty Advisors: Drs. Byeong-Min Rob and Doyle Dodd

Thanks to the generous MHI sponsors for the 2025-2026 competition, including the MHI Solutions Community, Swisslog, KNAPP, Proactive Global, and Fives Intralogistics Corp, who made the award money possible. Additionally, we would like to thank the following individuals for serving on the judging panel: Naveen Chandra Kukkala (EssilorLuxottica), Steve Hopper (Inviscid Consulting), Jason Looman (Scanreco), Derek Westfall (Westfall), Glen Wegel (Kitchen Cabinet Distributors), Prabhat Rao Pinnaka (Lowe’s), Joshua Joseph (Tesla), and Mary Beth Kurz (Clemson University).

The College-Industry Council on Material Handling Education (CICMHE) is essentially MHI’s bridge between academia and the material handling industry.

• Congratulations to all the winning teams, their industry clients, and their faculty advisors. To learn more about the competition, please visit mhi.org/cicmhe/capstone-design-competition.