Digital Ship Challenge
Are you ready to witness the next generation of maritime innovation?
The Digital Ship Challenge is an annual regional competition for high school students across Hampton Roads. Student teams, led by their teachers and mentored by local maritime industry representatives, design, build, test, and present innovative solutions to today’s maritime challenges.
2025 Digital Ship Challenge
During the ’25 Digital Ship Challenge, high school students from around Hampton Roads were tasked with designing and building an innovative support vessel that can maintain stability at sea. Students utilized engineering design, innovation, ship design and construction, research and statistics to build their vessels to be tested against real-world situations.
The winners of this year’s competition were:
1st place – Team Wet Socks from Advanced Technology Center in Virginia Beach
2nd place – Team IED #2 from Grassfield STEM Academy in Chesapeake
3rd place – Team Catalypso from Advanced Technology Center in Virginia Beach
Watch the recap video of the 2025 Digital Ship Challenge!
2024 Digital Ship Challenge
During the ’24 Digital Ship Challenge, local high school students designed and built cutting-edge container ships that then navigated the varying sea states of the Atlantic Ocean. On the day of the event, students delivered captivating presentations, detailing their design and construction processes for their container ships. Hampton Roads maritime professionals served as advisors, panelists, and judges throughout the competition and had the chance to showcase their companies. To see more about the 2024 competition, click here.
Contact Information
For any questions related to the Digital Ship Challenge, please contact Jennifer Renne, VDMC Curriculum Coordinator, at jrenne@odu.edu.
2024 Digital Ship Challenge Winners
