The 46th Annual David M. Mason Lectures in Chemical Engineering – With Nobel Laureate Dr. Frances H. Arnold

• Lecture Title: Innovation by Evolution: Bringing New Chemistry to Life
• Dr. Frances H. Arnold, California Institute of Technology
•  Sponsored by Stanford’s Department of Chemical Engineering
• 4:30-5:30pm, Jen-Hsun Huang Building, NVIDIA Auditorium, Free, Learn more

The Department of Chemical Engineering is pleased to invite you attend our 46th Annual David M. Mason Lecture on Tuesday, May 10, from 4:30 – 5:30 pm. The lecture will be held in Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center – Nvidia Auditorium. Our distinguished speaker will be Dr. Frances H. Arnold, California Institute of Technology’s Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry and director of the Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center.

Speaker Profile:

Dr. Frances Arnold, the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry and Director of the Rosen Bioengineering Center at the California Institute of Technology, became the first American woman to receive 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. Arnold received the Bower Award in Science in 2019, the Millennium Technology Prize in 2016, the Charles Stark Draper Prize in 2011, and a 2011 National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

She is an elected member of 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.  Arnold 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.

Lecture Title & Abstract:

Innovation by Evolution: Bringing New Chemistry to Life

Not satisfied with biology’s vast catalyst repertoire, I want to create new enzyme catalysts and expand the chemistry of life. We use the most powerful biological design process, evolution, to optimize existing enzymes and invent new ones, thereby circumventing our profound ignorance of how sequence encodes function. Chemistry encoded in DNA and optimized by evolution enables efficient, sustainable routes to important fuels and chemicals. Evolution not only optimizes, it can also innovate and create entirely new enzyme catalysts. I will illustrate how whole families of new-to-nature enzymes increase the scope of molecules and materials that can be built using synthetic biology.