Frances Arnold who works as chemical engineer at Caltech has been awarded with the Millenium technology prize for her contribution to technological advancements. Her field of operation has been directed evolution.
She has been successful in creating a faster lab controlled natural selection process. This had paved way for several advancements like production of valuableindustrial enzymes, better household detergents and even the breakthrough studies in the production of rocket fuel from sugar.
These awards have been in prevalence since 12 years recognizing the major contributions to technology. The awards are presented every 2 years and this the first time ever that a female receives the prize. The criteria for recognition is not for any technological development, but for ones that are specifically directed towards making human life better.
The award is presented by the Technology Academy Finland and the sources have reported that from the time the evaluations for the awards that started way back in November 2015, there has been only one name that stood out all the while. The ceremony was conducted in Helsinki and Prof Arnold had talked with the press prior to her departure for the award ceremony on Tuesday.
Prof Arnold and Enzyme Development
She had rather humbly admitted that she knew nothing about the field of enzyme production initially and she was thankful for not knowing much as she stated that she would not have ventured this hard route if she knew it was this difficult. When she began her work with enzyme production, this was mainly carried on by molecular biologists and she being a chemical engineer was nowhere in her research. She later picked up her interest in evolution being a perfect design mechanism. From there she got the trick to code the future enzymes. The connection that she created between evolution and enzymes has been the emergence of better enzymes and Caltech has been producing these for over 20 years now.