Frances Arnold

Dr. Frances Arnold is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Arnold received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2018) for pioneering directed evolution methods used to make enzymes for applications across medicine, consumer products, agriculture, fuels, and chemicals. she was appointed Co-Chair of the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) by President Biden in 2021.

Co-inventor on more than 60 issued US patents and active in technology transfer, Dr. Arnold co-founded Gevo, Inc. in 2005 to make fuels and chemicals from renewable resources, Provivi, Inc. in 2014 to develop non-toxic modes of agricultural pest control, and Aralez, Inc. in 2019 to develop sustainable biocatalytic processes for producing medicines and chemicals. She is a Director of Illumina and Alphabet and also serves on the Advisory Panel of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowships in Science and Engineering and as a Trustee of the Gordon Research Conferences. Dr. Arnold has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the US National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering she was appointed to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences by Pope Francis in 2019. She received her B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.