Almost from the first moment Hannah Epstein set foot on the Picatinny Arsenal military base not far from her northern New Jersey home, she knew what she wanted to do when she grew up: Become an engineer for the U.S. Department of Defense.

So when she heard about the Department of Defense Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (DoD SMART) Scholarship as a teenager, she knew she had to go for it once she got to college.

Epstein, now a junior in the University of Delaware’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, recently achieved her goal of being awarded the DoD SMART Scholarship, which provides students with full tuition for up to five years as well as mentorships, summer internships, a stipend and full-time employment with the DoD after graduation.

“Hannah’s selection as a DoD SMART Scholar attests to the breadth and quality of education students receive in the College of Engineering,” said Chuck Shermeyer, assistant dean for undergraduate services in the College of Engineering. “Her drive to represent the college through this prestigious scholarship is admirable and will only serve to show those she works with that we are educating the next generation of amazing engineers.”

But it wasn’t as easy as she hoped. The first time she applied as a freshman in college, she didn’t get it, she said. She was ready to give up, but her mom convinced her to work harder and try again. When she did, not only did she earn the prestigious award, but she also secured a placement at Picatinny, where she had been dreaming of working since she was 16 years old.

“Picatinny, through robotics, has been a part of my life since high school,” Epstein said. “It’s crazy that now I get to work for them and do exactly what I said I was going to do since I was 16 years old.”

When she enrolled at UD, she was on the fence about pursuing chemical or mechanical engineering, but ultimately chose the latter. She said she fell in love with mechanical work during her time on the robotics team in high school when she had to fill in for the carpentry subdivision. Now, she’s helping out at UD’s machine shop as a teaching assistant, supporting her love of power tools.

“Hannah has a strong sense of community, always helping peers around her,” said Jenni Buckley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering who has worked closely with Epstein. “We are lucky to have her represent the mechanical engineering department.”

In addition to her engineering studies, with a focus on automotive engineering, Epstein also is pursuing minors in entrepreneurship and English.

“Nothing is more valuable than an engineer who can write well,” Epstein said, noting that her love of writing and literature had her toying with the idea of pursuing a career in journalism at one point. English has always been her first love, but she also wanted to do something business-related with her collegiate studies.

Beyond her classes, she’s also the programming director for the Alpha Xi Delta sorority and recruitment chair of Alpha Kappa Psi, a business-focused fraternity. When she’s not busy with classes or extracurriculars, she can be found consuming lots of coffee, spending time in the Morris Library or doing homework in the labs at Spencer.

But her experiences on the robotics team in high school sealed the deal for her future in engineering.

That experience is also what exposed her to the Picatinny Arsenal and what it would be like working as a female engineer for the military. She remembers attending a career fair for women interested in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) at the start of her senior year, right before the COVID pandemic hit, and seeing some of the coolest tech she’d ever seen in her life — guns and bullets and radar technology. After speaking to several of the female professionals, she decided they had “the coolest job on the face of the planet,” and that’s exactly what she wanted to do.

So they told her to look into the DoD SMART Scholarship. The idea stuck.

Her work with the robotics team in high school started out in electrical engineering and then shifted to mechanical engineering, and competitions included fully uniformed high-ranking officers in attendance. She chose UD because of its highly ranked Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and also because her father is an alumnus who helped her fall in love with UDairy at a young age.

“Delaware also had the most of that hands-on engineering aspect, by comparison to a lot of other schools,” she said. “Every semester you get to build a different project. I fell in love with the idea that every semester I could do something hands-on.”

During summer 2022, Epstein got to work for a different military branch through an internship with the U.S. Navy at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division in Virginia. There, she served as a member of the B53 branch, which specializes in the integrated top-side design of Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard ships.

“Basically, anything that goes on top of a warship, we get to work on,” she said. “It’s a lot of design strategy and working with different technologies.”