Pope Francis has appointed as an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences the distinguished Professor Frances Hamilton Arnold, United States of America, lecturer in chemical engineering, bioengineering and biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Professor Frances Hamilton Arnold was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America, on July 25, 1956. She obtained a degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University and, in 1985, a research doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley; she is currently Linus Pauling Professor of chemical engineering, bioengineering, and biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, where she has taught since 1986. For her innovative research on methods of direct evolution to produce new enzymes in the laboratory, she received the Millennium Technology Prize in 2016 and was awarded, in 2018, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. She is the co-founder of Gevo. Inc., a company for the production of fuels and chemical products from renewable sources.
