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. She is the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2018). Arnold pioneered directed protein evolution and has used those methods for applications in alternative energy, chemicals, and medicine. Arnold received the Charles Stark Draper Prize of the US National Academy of Engineering in 2011, the US 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 US National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering. Arnold was appointed to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 2019 and recently received the Portrait of a Nation Award at the National Portrait Gallery. Arnold co-founded three companies in sustainable chemistry and renewable energy (Gevo, Provivi, Aralez Bio) and serves on several public and private company boards. She earned a B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.