Frances Arnold

Frances Arnold is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology, where she has been on the faculty since 1986.

Frances received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2018) for pioneering directed enzyme evolution; she has used those methods to create enzymes for alternative energy, chemicals, and medicine. Frances received the Charles Stark Draper Prize of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2011, the U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama in 2013, and the Millennium Technology Prize in 2016. She has been elected to all three of the U.S. National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering. She was appointed by Pope Francis to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 2019.

Co-inventor on 58 issued U.S. patents and active in technology transfer, Frances 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. Frances received her BS in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University and her PhD in Chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. She chairs the Advisory Panel of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowships in Science and Engineering and is a trustee of the Gordon Research Conferences.