Frances H. Arnold is the Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology, where her research focuses on evolution of biological systems in the laboratory. Frances Arnold has co-authored 220 scientific publications and edited several books on protein engineering and laboratory protein evolution. She also has more than 40 patents and patent applications. Prof. Arnold has received numerous awards and honors, including election to the National Academy of Engineering in 2000, the Institute of Medicine in 2004, and the National Academy of Sciences in 2008.
Jack W. Szostak is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and the Alex Rich Distinguished Investigator in the Dept. of Molecular Biology and the Center for Computational and Integrative Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital. His current research interests are in the laboratory synthesis of self-replicating systems, the origin of life, and applied evolutionary chemistry. He and his colleagues developed in vitro selection as a tool for the isolation of rare functional RNA, DNA and protein molecules from large pools of random sequences. His laboratory has used in vitro selection and directed evolution to isolate and characterize numerous nucleic acid sequences with specific ligand binding and catalytic properties. For this work, Dr. Szostak was awarded, along with Dr. Gerald Joyce, the 1994 National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology and the 1997 Sigrist Prize from the University of Bern. Dr. Szostak is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2000, Dr. Szostak was awarded the Medal of the Genetics Society of America, and in 2006 Dr. Szostak shared the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award with Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider. Dr. Szostak is the 2008 recipient of the H.P. Heineken Prize in Biophysics and Biochemistry.
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