Photo by Nick Donnoli
By Wright Seneres, Office of Engineering Communication
August 13, 2025
Craig B. Arnold will receive the Catalyst Award from the Research and Development Council of New Jersey, in recognition of his leadership in expanding innovation at Princeton University and across the state.
The Council cited his key role in launching the New Jersey AI Hub and helping to accelerate research translation, entrepreneurship and statewide collaboration in emerging technologies. His award will be given during the R&D Council’s Edison Patent Awards ceremony in November.
Arnold, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and vice dean for innovation, joined the Princeton faculty in 2003. His research focuses on laser processing in materials, with a particular emphasis on shaping laser-material interactions. His work aims to deepen understanding of the fundamental materials science and optical physics that impact fields such as energy storage and conversion, biology and imaging.
During his career, he has won numerous major awards, including an Edison Patent Award in 2017 for the creation of an adjustable lens that focuses light in response to sound waves. The tunable acoustic gradient (TAG) lens is now used in many industrial and research applications in fields such as robotics, computer vision and ultra-high precision microscopy. Arnold holds 17 patents and co-founded three companies based on research conducted at Princeton.
He is the principal investigator of Advancing Photonics Technologies (APT), a regional collaboration of two- and four-year colleges and universities, industry, government, workforce development agencies, startups and accelerators in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, centered on photonics research and innovation. APT is supported by a National Science Foundation Engines Development Award and led by Princeton and Rowan University.
Arnold received his bachelor’s degree from Haverford College and doctorate in experimental condensed matter physics from Harvard University. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Naval Research Laboratory prior to joining Princeton.