Professor Frances Arnold, a chemical engineer from the California Institute of Technology or Caltech, has won the 2016 Millennium Technology Prize for pioneering "directed evolution." She is the first female to win the prize that has been in existence for 12 years.

Prof. Arnold, 59, pioneered directed evolution (DE), a method that accelerates natural selection (the basis of evolution) in a laboratory. Directed evolution is a mimic of the natural evolution cycle. It's used in protein engineering and imitates the process of natural selection to evolve proteins or nucleic acids toward a user-defined goal.

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In DE, a single gene is evolved by iterative rounds of mutagenesis, selection or screening, and amplification.

Prof. Arnold's work on DE has spawned a myriad of real world benefits such as making rocket fuel from sugar; producing catalysts that allow industrial chemicals and fuels to be made from renewable sources and making improved household detergents.

A great success for DE is creating an enzyme used in developing Januvia, a popular drug for type 2 diabetes that would otherwise have been produced using heavy metals.

"They replaced a chemical process with an enzymatic process, thereby completely eliminating toxic metals that were needed ... and getting solvent waste reduction of 60%," said Prof. Arnold.

The Millennium Technology Prize is awarded every two years and carries with it a €1 million ($1.1 million) prize.

In awarding Prof. Arnold the prize, the international selection committee said she won "in recognition of her discoveries that launched the field of 'directed evolution', which mimics natural evolution to create new and better proteins in the laboratory.

"This technology uses the power of biology and evolution to solve many important problems, often replacing less efficient and sometimes harmful technologies. Thanks to directed evolution, sustainable development and clean technology become available in many areas of industry that no longer have to rely on non-renewable raw materials."

The Millennium Technology Prize is one of the world's largest technology prizes and is awarded by the Technology Academy Finland, an independent fund established by Finnish industry and the Finnish state in partnership.

It is Finland's tribute to innovations for a better life. The aims of the prize are to promote technological research and Finland as a high-tech Nordic welfare state.

The prize was inaugurated in 2004 and its first recipient was Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the worldwide web.

Prof. Arnold is the Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biochemistry at the Caltech where she studies evolution and its applications in science, medicine, chemicals and energy. She earned her B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 1979 and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

TagsProfessor Frances Arnold, 2016 Millennium Technology Prize, directed evolution, Sir Tim Berners-Lee