Altair Announces its Enlighten Award Winners

Altair, a global leader in computational intelligence, has named the winners of the 2025 Altair Enlighten Award. Presented in association with the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), the award honors sustainability and lightweighting advancements.

“Throughout its 13-year history, the Enlighten Award remains the premier honor showcasing the automotive industry’s most groundbreaking achievements in sustainable technology,” says Sam Mahalingam, chief technology officer, Altair. 

“The Altair Enlighten Award represents the type of leadership our industry needs—bold, practical solutions that move us closer to a sustainable future,” says Elizabeth Krear, president and CEO, Center for Automotive Research. “At CAR, we see this award as a natural extension of our mission to convene stakeholders, highlight transformative research, and advance the technologies that will define tomorrow’s mobility.”

Below is a list of all winning organizations, runners-up, and honorable mentions.

Future of Lightweighting

Winner: Vortex CAE—Enlighten: A Novel Holistic Topometry Based Optimizer for the Design of Lightweight Crash Structures

• Vortex CAE’s new solver offers direct crash and impact optimizations using full fidelity models. 

Runner-up: Magna—Hemp-PA6 Composite Roof Rack Inner

• Magna demonstrated the use of Hemp Nylon (PA6) in automotive exteriors.

Enabling Technology

Winner: CompositeEdge GmbH and ATA Mute B.V.—Adaptive Ultra-Thin Noise Solution

• CompositeEdge GmbH and ATA Mute B.V. have developed an acoustic element under 1 mm thick that offers sound absorption.

Runner-up: Lucid—Modal Transient Analysis Based Durability CAE Workflow

• Lucid, in collaboration with the Altair OptiStruct development team, developed and implemented a durability CAE workflow that progressed from MBD-based vehicle dynamics simulation to FEM-based strength, stiffness, and fatigue analysis, and structural optimization. 

Honorable Mention: Mercedes-Benz AG & Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India Private Limited—An Automated Sustainable Process for Generating Superelements

• This fully automated process streamlines setup tfor complex parts, eliminates user errors, and requires no manual intervention. 

Module Lightweighting

Winner: Syensqo and Geely—Amodel PPA Stator Cooling System

• Geely improved e-motor efficiency with a stator cooling design using Syensqo’s Amodel PPA.

Runner-up: American Axle & Manufacturing (AAM)—Modular Lightweight Axle Housing Innovation

• AAM’s modular lightweight axle housing innovation replaced two axle configurations with a single, modular design.

Sustainable Computing

Winner: Lucid—Design-Driven Structural Assessment to Enable Accelerated Product Development

• Lucid’s Design-Driven Structural Assessment approach uses Altair SimSolid’s meshless solver. Engineers can run design iterations directly within a CAD environment,.

Runner-up: Mercedes-Benz AG & Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India Private Limited—An Automated Sustainable Process for Generating Superelements  

• This enables agile, iterative optimizations with fast design feedback.

Sustainable Process

Winner: Marelli—Adhesive Wastewater Recovery Solution

• Marelli implemented a cleaning process for adhesive manufacturing equipment.

Runner-up: CITIC Dicastal Co., Ltd.—Key Technology for Integrated Forming of Large Aluminum Alloy Structural Components

• This innovation is an application of a non-heat-treated Al-Mg alloy in commercial vehicle structures. 

Sustainable Product

Winner: NIO and AkzoNobel—Bottom Plate Coating for Battery Pack to Improve Lifespan During Battery Swap for Electrical Vehicles

• The innovation replaced non-recyclable materials with recyclable alternatives, eliminated VOC emissions, and improved coating efficiency.

Runner-up: Chery Automobile Co., Ltd.—Answering Earth with Low-Carbon Recycled Aluminum

• Chery Automobile’s low-carbon aluminum initiative uses 100% recycled aluminum in a closed-loop system with impurity removal and employs heat-treatment-free integrated die-casting. 

Responsible AI

Winner: Lucid—Predicting Crash Modes with Altair PhysicsAI

• Lucid transformed crash CAE by applying AI-driven insights to predict complex, non-linear deformation behaviors under off-axis and oblique impact scenarios. 

Runner-up: Lucid—Agentic AI for Engineering Automation

• Lucid automated CAD data retrieval, custom script execution, analysis, and reporting by implementing AI-driven natural language support.

The Enlighten Award winners were announced in an awards ceremony at the CAR Management Briefing Seminars in Detroit, MI, on September 16, 2025. For more information about the Enlighten Award, visit altair.com/enlighten-award.

Partners for the 2025 Enlighten Award include Auto Bild Japan, Autocar Professional, Automobil Industrie, Auto Messe Web, Auto Messe Web Worldwide, Center for Automotive Research, Google Cloud, Korean Society of Automotive Engineers (KSAE), SAE Automotive Engineering, and Tech Briefs.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.