Where did I learn about the word science? I probably learned about it reading Jim Watson's book actually, The Double Helix, a book that my father gave me when I was probably in sixth or seventh grade. And I read that book and it was an absolute revelation to me as a young kid to read about how science actually gets done and, you know the book I'm sure, so you know that it's a bit of a mystery story in a way. It's a group of scientists who are fascinated with this question of what is the structure of the genetic material DNA and how do we figure it out? And there were rivalries, these were real people, they had foibles, and he writes about all of that. And that's not the kind of thing that when you're studying science in school, you learn about in textbooks. So, I realized from that book that science is an active process.

It's something that people do and it very much has the character of the people that are involved in it. And the qualities aren't always good. I mean, as you know, Rosalind Franklin was not treated well in those days and that didn't escape my attention either. So, I did wonder, can girls or women actually be successful in science? It was just a question mark. I didn't spend a lot of time dwelling on it, but it occurred to me that, gee, there aren't too many women doing science. And I certainly didn't know any, myself or my family.

Dr. Jennifer Doudna is a biochemist and 2020 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry. She is also the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health sciences as well as a professor of biochemistry, biophysics, and structural biology. Her work focuses on RNA interference and gene editing.

In 1985, she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in biochemistry from Pomona College and in 1989 received her PhD in biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology from Harvard Medical School. From 1991 to 1994, she was a Lucille P. Markey post-doctoral scholar in Biomedical science at the University of Colorado Boulder. She also received fellowships from the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

From 1994 to 2001, Dr. Doudna was an associate professor and full professor at Yale University. In 2002, Dr. Douda accepted a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology position at the University of California, Berkeley. She has also been researching with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1997, and her work with CRISPR-Cas9 and other genome-engineering techniques has led to breakthroughs in human and agricultural genomics research. At the Doudna Lab, researchers focus on determining mechanisms of novel genome editing tools for in vitro usage in plants and mammals as well as anti-CRISPR agents.

Dr. Doudna has received numerous awards for her work including the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a method for genome editing, the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the 2016 Japan Prize, the 2019 Welfare Betterment Prize, the 2020 Wolf Prize in Medicine, and the 2025 National Medal of Technology and Innovation. She is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors, and a member of the Royal Society.