The School of Engineering and Applied Science has recognized six assistant professors for outstanding teaching and research. Each recipient of the 2025 junior faculty awards will receive $50,000 to support their work.
E. Lawrence Keyes, Jr./Emerson Electric Co. Faculty Advancement Award
Jaime Fernández Fisac
An assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, Jaime Fernández Fisac aims to ensure that robots and AI systems operate safely and transparently, enabling them to be trusted by their users and the public. He directs the Safe Robotics Laboratory, where he combines control systems, artificial intelligence and game theory to develop robots that can reason about their own safety, adapt to uncertain and dynamic real-world situations, and interact strategically with humans. In 2024 his lab released an open-source software toolbox for robotic safety that is now being used by leading robotics labs. The software is considered the state of the art in safety controller synthesis for general robots, writes Jim Sturm, chair of electrical and computer engineering. In collaboration with Toyota Research Institute, Fisac’s lab demonstrated last year a first-of-its-kind human-centered safety filter for race driving, which allows novice drivers to hone their skill behind the wheel of a high-fidelity racing simulator without ever losing control of their car. Fisac co-directs the Princeton AI4ALL outreach summer camp, which teaches AI technology and policy to high schoolers of all backgrounds to broaden access to AI and inspire future leaders to use it ethically. Before joining Princeton in 2020, he was a research scientist at Waymo, where he pioneered new approaches to interaction planning that continue to shape how autonomous vehicles share the road today. He is also the co-founder of Vault Robotics, a startup developing agile delivery robots that work alongside human drivers. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and WIRED and recognized with the Google and Sony faculty research awards and the NSF CAREER Award. He earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer sciences from the University of California-Berkeley.
Jyotirmoy Mandal
An assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, Jyotirmoy Mandal focuses on understanding radiative heat flows in both nature and in artificial surfaces including buildings and their surroundings. Radiant heat is carried by electromagnetic waves, and Mandal’s research explores the phenomenon at the nanoscale scale level as well as in the built environment. Mandal’s research team is developing new photonic and plasmonic materials with novel properties for passive thermoregulation and studying their broader thermal impact on Earth. Mandal’s recent work includes the development of designs that can passively cool or thermoregulate buildings, including coatings with extreme solar reflectance and thermal emittance, and directional emitters of heat. In nominating him for recognition, colleague Elie Bou-Zeid said Mandal is well positioned to make significant contributions to both materials science and geosciences. “Few scientists have the background to develop and build new materials with unique radiative properties, deploy and test them in real urban settings, and also evaluate their broader implications on building energy demands and the global radiative balance of the planet,” said Bou-Zeid, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. In addition to his research, Mandal has served on several departmental committees and developed a new graduate course “Optical Materials for Thermoregulation on the Built Environment and Beyond.” Branko Glišić, chair of civil and environmental engineering, said in nominating Mandal that his services to the department have been exemplary and noted “his great talent for attracting and mentoring talented researchers.”
Ellen Zhong
Ellen Zhong, an assistant professor of computer science, uses artificial intelligence methods to expand the range of possibilities for biological imaging techniques. She has pioneered the use of cryo-electron microscopy, especially focusing on the reconstruction of proteins at the atomic scale. For proteins, minute variations in structure imply major differences in function, so understanding their shapes in such fine detail has had transformative impacts on medicine. “This area of work has brought on a revolution in the field of structural biology, overcoming some of the limitations of earlier imaging methods,” said Szymon Rusinkiewicz, chair of computer science. “Her record more broadly is impressive, with publications spanning the range [of scientific journals] from those in artificial intelligence focused on fundamental image-processing methods all the way to more-applied work in structural biology focused on specific proteins,” he added. In addition to her research, Zhong has made a strong impact as a teacher. Since joining Princeton in 2022, she has developed a graduate seminar called “Machine Learning for Structural Biology,” for which she earned an outstanding teaching commendation from the Engineering School; taught an undergraduate course on “Mathematics for Numerical Computing and Machine Learning,” and shown exceptional leadership as an adviser and mentor to her students. Zhong previously interned at DeepMind on the AlphaFold team, and she earned her Ph.D. from MIT in 2022.
Alfred Rheinstein Faculty Award
Ben Eysenbach
An assistant professor of computer science, Ben Eysenbach focuses on reinforcement learning, a type of machine learning that uses rewards and feedback to teach an autonomous agent to make intelligent decisions through trial-and-error. Eysenbach’s work draws connections between different areas of machine learning and reinforcement learning, with the goal of designing more robust, simpler methods to address important problems in science and society. “Professor Eysenbach is a star in the making, who promises to extend the reach of reinforcement learning to a variety of new problems in science and engineering,” writes Szymon Rusinkiewicz, chair of computer science. Since starting at Princeton in 2023, he added, Eysenbach “has well over a dozen publications at the most prestigious conferences in his field.” In addition to his outstanding research contributions, Eysenbach has also had an important impact on teaching, co-developing a new course on reinforcement learning in 2024 and earning an outstanding teaching commendation from the Engineering School for a graduate course he taught in 2023. He completed a Ph.D. in machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University and spent a number of years at Google Brain/Research before and during his doctoral work. He has an undergraduate degree in mathematics from MIT.
Howard B. Wentz, Jr. Junior Faculty Award
Marcella Lusardi
An assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering and the Princeton Materials Institute, Marcella Lusardi’s research centers on designing advanced catalytic materials to address critical challenges in sustainability, energy and the environment. Lusardi focuses on how molecular structure dictates important features of these catalytic materials, such as cost, yield and carbon footprint. Rather than looking only at the finished architecture, she has developed a unique approach to studying these materials’ performance, focusing on how their structures change over time as they are being synthesized. The approach has uncovered new methods to tune material properties and has led to the commercial development of materials that meet modern sustainability standards. Since arriving at Princeton, she has expanded the scope of her work to include composite materials for electrocatalysis and carbon capture in humid environments. “Lusardi’s success stems from her interdisciplinary expertise at the nexus of chemical engineering and materials science,” said Christos Maravelias, chair of chemical and biological engineering, who also praised her contributions as an outstanding teacher. Lusardi earned her Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from MIT and conducted postdoctoral research at Caltech from 2018 to 2021. She then worked as a research scientist at BASF, where she developed advanced catalysts to reduce diesel emissions. She joined Princeton in 2022. Earlier this year, Lusardi received funding from Project X to speed the discovery of new advanced materials.
Jesse Jenkins
Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, is a macro-scale energy systems engineer focused on informing and evaluating the clean energy transition. Jenkins’ ZERO Lab utilizes energy systems models to evaluate and optimize low-carbon energy technologies, guide investment and research in innovative energy technologies, and generate insights to improve energy and climate policy and planning decisions. In her nomination letter, department chair Naomi Ehrich Leonard noted that Jenkins’ work “provides timely and rigorous analysis to inform contemporary policy, planning, and investment decisions, and it has already had real impact on public policy.” Prior to joining the Princeton faculty in 2019, Jenkins was a postdoctoral environmental fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. He also spent six years as an energy and climate policy analyst prior to embarking on his academic career. Jenkins was named to both the 2024 TIME100 Next and TIME100 Climate lists in recognition of his influential work to inform energy policy in the United States. “By every measure, Professor Jenkins is performing at the highest level in his research, teaching and service,” wrote Leonard.
