Hatzell, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, was one of 18 faculty members from institutions across the U.S. selected to receive this year’s award.

The Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award is given to faculty who are within the first five years of their academic careers and who have demonstrated not only an “outstanding independent body of scholarship” but also a deep commitment to education. Each of this year’s recipients will receive an unrestricted research grant of $100,000.

Hatzell, who is also an associated faculty with the Princeton Materials Institute, studies new materials for a sustainable future, often concentrating on next-generation energy storage technologies, including solid-state and redox flow batteries. Hatzell’s recent work has explored a low-energy alternative to conventional direct air capture systems and revealed the nanoscale phenomena causing solid-state batteries to fail.

Since joining the Princeton faculty in 2021, Hatzell has received three separate commendations for outstanding teaching from the School of Engineering and Applied Science. She has taught courses on topics including negative emissions technologies and electrochemical engineering.

Prior to Princeton, Hatzell was an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and chemical and biological engineering at Vanderbilt University. She received a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Drexel University, an M.S. in mechanical engineering from Pennsylvania State University, and a B.S.E and B.A. in economics from Swarthmore College.