By the Office of Engineering Communications
May 19, 2025
Jesse Jenkins has received the Howard B. Wentz, Jr. Junior Faculty Award from the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
He is one of six assistant professors recognized for outstanding teaching and research. Each recipient of the 2025 junior faculty awards will receive $50,000 to support their work.
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.