Overview

Gender

female

The Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biochemistry and Director of the Rosen Bioengineering Center at the California Institute of Technology

Dr. Frances H. Arnold’s research group engineers proteins and biosynthetic pathways by rewriting their DNA. She pioneered methods of ‘directed evolution’ that are used in laboratories throughout the world to make drugs, foods, textiles, fuels, and more. Dr. Arnold is very active in technology transfer. Co-inventor on 42 US patents, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

She has served on the science advisory boards of numerous start-up companies, including Genomatica, Amyris, Mascoma, Fluidigm, Codexis, and Maxygen.

She co-founded Gevo, Inc. in 2005 to make fuels and chemicals from renewable resources and Provivi Labs in 2013 to make advanced agrochemicals.

Dr. Arnold received her bachelor’s degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University and a PhD in chemical engineering from UC Berkeley. She has received numerous honors and awards, including the Eni Prize in Renewable and Nonconventional Energy, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, and the Charles Stark Draper Prize of the US National Academy of Engineering. She is the first woman to have been elected to membership in all three US National Academies, of Science, Medicine, and Engineering. Dr. Arnold was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011.

Among many other activities, Dr. Arnold serves as judge for the Queen Elizabeth Prize in Engineering, on the President’s International Advisory Council of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), and on the Advisory Panel for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowships in Science and Engineering.