Hatzell currently leads the industrial decarbonization and clean catalysis initiative at SEI and holds joint appointments in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Most recently, she led the Materials for Carbon-Neutral Fuel Production track at this year’s Energy Materials Day, which attracted over 400 participants from academia and industry. 

“Marta has been an outstanding addition to SEI’s initiative lead program, where her contributions have already made a significant impact. I am excited to see her further engage with the Georgia Tech energy community in this role,” said Christine Conwell, SEI interim executive director.

Hatzell’s research group focuses on exploring sustainable catalysis and separations to enable clean energy, water, and food production. She serves as the site principal investigator and research thrust leader for CASFER, the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center (NSF-ERC) with funding of $26 million for advancing sustainable fertilizer production. She is also a principal investigator in the Department of Energy’s $100 million National Alliance for Water Innovation project. 

Hatzell is the recipient of the NSF Early CAREER Award for her work on distributed solar fertilizers and received the Gordon and Betty Moore Inventor fellowship to work on a low-cost, photocatalytic air-breathing system that converts air into liquid, ammonia-based fertilizer. She also received the 2020 Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry and the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Sustainable Chemistry Lectureship Award in 2024. Hatzell serves as a senior editor of the ACS Energy Letters journal.

Before her role at Georgia Tech, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Penn State University. 

“I’m looking forward to working with the SEI staff and faculty to continue to grow Georgia Tech’s impact on the rapidly changing energy sector,” says Hatzell.