Frances Arnold
California Institute of Technology, USA
Innovation by Evolution: Bringing New Chemistry to Life
Monday, February 21, 8:00 PM
Moscone Center
Being named the 2022 Biophysical Society Lecturer is the highest annual award bestowed by the Biophysical Society. In addition to presenting the Annual Biophysical Society Lecture, the recipient provides a molecule or figure that depicts his/her research. That figure is used in the background design for that year’s Annual Meeting print and web announcements.
Frances Arnold, Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology, pioneered directed enzyme evolution, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018. She was recently appointed to co-chair the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Among other awards, Arnold has received the Charles Stark Draper Prize of the US National Academy of Engineering (2011), the US National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2011), and the Millennium Technology Prize (2016). She was the first woman elected to all three US National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering and was appointed to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 2019. Co-inventor on more than 60 patents, Arnold was inducted into the US Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. She co-founded three companies working in sustainable chemistry and renewable energy (Gevo, Provivi, and Aralez Bio) and serves on the board of directors of several public and private companies.
The Image: The catalytic repertoire of heme proteins covers an astonishing range of reactions, yet we have only explored a tiny fraction of the POSSIBLE chemistry of life.