Honorary Speakers
Prof. Frances H. Arnold
California Institute of Technology, USA
Marie Curie Lecture “Innovation by Evolution: Bringing New Chemistry to Life”
Frances H. Arnold is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology.
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In 2018, Arnold received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering directed evolution methods used to make enzymes for applications in sustainable chemistry across medicine, consumer products, agriculture, fuels and chemicals. In 2021, she was appointed Co-Chair of the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) by President Biden.
Arnold has been elected to 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.
Prof. Jeffrey A. Hoffman
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Lecture titled “Mars, MOXIE, and the Future of Human Space Flight”
Jeffrey A. Hoffman is a professor in MIT’s Aeronautics and Astronautics Department. As a NASA astronaut (1978-1997) he made five space flights, becoming the first astronaut to log 1000 hours of flight time aboard the Space Shuttle.
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Dr. Hoffman was Payload Commander of STS-46, the first flight of the US-Italian Tethered Satellite System. He has performed four spacewalks, including the first unplanned, contingency spacewalk in NASA’s history (1985) and the initial repair/rescue mission for the Hubble Space Telescope (1993).
In 2001, Dr. Hoffman joined the MIT faculty, where he teaches courses on space operations and space systems design. His primary research interests are in improving the technology of space suits and designing innovative space systems for human and robotic space exploration. He is Deputy Principal Investigator of the MOXIE experiment on NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance mission, which for the first time has produced oxygen from extraterrestrial material, a critical step in the future of human space exploration. In 2007, Dr. Hoffman was elected to the US Astronaut Hall of Fame.
Dr. Hoffman received a BA in Astronomy (summa cum laude) from Amherst College; a PhD in Astrophysics from Harvard University; and an MSc in Materials Science from Rice University.