Arnold, who graduated from Princeton with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering, will receive the Woodrow Wilson Award. Brunkow, who earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology, will receive the James Madison Medal. These awards will be presented on Alumni Day, to be held on campus Saturday, Feb. 20, 2027. 

The University bestows the Woodrow Wilson Award annually upon an undergraduate alumna or alumnus whose career embodies the call to duty in Wilson’s 1896 speech, “Princeton in the Nation’s Service.” A Princeton graduate and faculty member, Wilson served as president of the University, governor of New Jersey and president of the United States. 

The James Madison Medal, established by the Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni (APGA), is named for the fourth president of the United States, who is considered to be Princeton’s first graduate student. It is presented each year to celebrate an alumna or alumnus of the Princeton Graduate School who has had a distinguished career, advanced the cause of graduate education or achieved an outstanding record of public service. 

Woodrow Wilson Award recipient 

Arnold is a pioneer in the field of “directed evolution” of enzymes. She serves as the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at Caltech and is the director of its Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center. In 2018, she became the first Princeton alumna to win a Nobel Prize, receiving the honor in chemistry for research that produced enzymes capable of manufacturing cleaner biofuels and pharmaceuticals. 

“The breakthrough that earned Frances Arnold the Nobel Prize for chemistry has led to subsequent discoveries in other disciplines and industries that have helped make our world healthier, cleaner and safer,” said Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83. “As a champion of academic research, opportunity, and teaching excellence, she exemplifies the values that our University holds dear.” 

A native of Pittsburgh, Arnold became one of the few women studying mechanical and aerospace engineering when she enrolled at Princeton in 1974, where her nuclear physicist father had studied. She graduated magna cum laude in 1979. 

Arnold applied her degree to the field of renewable energy, studying solar power projects during an internship in Brazil and working at the Solar Energy Research Institute in Colorado. Following the U.S. elections in 1980, which diminished renewable energy as a national priority, Arnold enrolled in the Ph.D. program for chemical engineering at the University of California-Berkeley, where she studied biotechnology and learned how to design and manufacture protein therapeutics. 

In 1987, she became an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Caltech. There, she established the Arnold Lab, whose efforts to genetically engineer biological systems became industrially relevant foundations for what became known as synthetic biology. Her lab developed a revolutionary approach by introducing random mutations to specific protein genes and screening libraries of the mutated proteins for enhanced properties, accumulating mutations over multiple generations to engineer useful enzymes. Arnold’s evolutionary approach to design became the gold standard for enzyme engineering, which led to her winning half of the 2018 Nobel Prize. (The other half was awarded to George P. Smith and Gregory P. Winter, for “phage display.”) 

“A treasure trove of new enzymes awaits discovery for carrying out chemistry that we could not even contemplate just a few years ago,” she said in her 2018 Nobel lecture. “The universe of possible proteins, my universe, contains solutions to many of humanity’s greatest needs: there we will find cures for disease, solutions to energy crises and a warming world, food and clean water for a growing population, and ways to arrest the miseries of aging.” 

The holder of more than 60 U.S. patents, Arnold co-founded Gevo in 2005 to produce biofuels and Provivi in 2013 to develop nontoxic strategies for crop protection. Prior to her Nobel recognition, Arnold was awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize from the National Academy of Engineering (2011) and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Barack Obama (2011). She was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2014) and received the Millennium Technology Prize (2016). Arnold served as co-chair of the President’s Scientific Advisory Council (2021-25) and is one of only a few people with membership in all three of America’s national academies: the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering. 

James Madison Medal recipient 

In 2001, Brunkow and her colleagues at a biotechnology startup identified a single mutated mouse gene — known as FOXP3 — linked to an autoimmune disease, a discovery that proved illuminating to the function of human immune systems. Their research helped launch the field of peripheral immune tolerance — how the body prevents its own immune system from attacking healthy tissues and organs — and spurred new medical advances to treat autoimmune disease, enable transplantation and advance immuno-oncology. For this breakthrough, Brunkow became the Princeton Graduate School’s first alum to win the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. She shared the 2025 award with Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi. 

“Mary Brunkow’s trailblazing achievements illustrate the power of high-quality scientific research to deepen our understanding of human health and improve the prevention and treatment of disease,” Eisgruber said. “Through her careful work, her transformative discoveries, and her exceptional career, she has demonstrated how collaboration, persistence, and curiosity can make a better world. She is a spectacular representative of the aspirations that define this University and its Graduate School.” 

Brunkow grew up in Portland, Oregon, and attended the University of Washington, where she earned a degree in cell and molecular biology. Inspired by a fortuitous opportunity to work in a genetics research lab, she decided to forgo her original plan of attending medical school and became a member of the first graduate class of Princeton’s new Department of Molecular Biology in 1984. Her adviser was former Princeton president Shirley Tilghman, then the Howard A. Prior Professor of the Life Sciences. Brunkow’s Ph.D. research contributed to the current understanding of genomic imprinting — the concept that a gene can be shut down depending on whether it was inherited from the mother or the father. 

After postdoctoral work in Toronto, Brunkow decided to enter the biotech world, which was undergoing an exciting transformation fueled by advances in genome analysis. In 1994, she joined Darwin Molecular Corp. near Seattle, the small startup where she would conduct her Nobel-recognized research. Her team focused on a mutant mouse strain called scurfy, which exhibits a fatal autoimmune condition of unknown genetic origin. By combining classical genetic mapping with cutting-edge genomics approaches of the time, long before whole genomes could be routinely mapped and deciphered, her team eventually determined the molecular basis of this mutation in the late 1990s. Her seminal 2001 publication described the novel FOXP3 gene, which provided a critical piece to the puzzle of peripheral immune tolerance. 

“Our discovery of the FOXP3 gene and its essential role in driving the development of regulatory T cells set in motion astonishing advances in our understanding of how the immune system both protects against foreign invaders and does not recognize and attack our own organs and tissues,” she said in her Nobel banquet speech. 

Brunkow then made a career pivot, combining consulting and contract research roles with formal training in technical and scientific writing. Her first position at ISB in 2006 was as a science writer, helping communicate complex systems biology findings to broader audiences. Since 2009, Brunkow has been instrumental in coordinating and managing complex, multidisciplinary projects at ISB that integrate human genetics, whole-genome sequencing, multiomic profiling and computational biology to uncover molecular mechanisms underlying conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, bipolar disorder, aging and longevity. 

“Discoveries come from places where you never imagined, so you have to keep an open mind and keep your eyes open to different pathways, as you’re journeying through a topic of interest, but also an open mind in terms of career path and where you go in life,” she said in 2025. “I would say I’m a pretty good example of that.” 

The awards will be presented in Richardson Auditorium during the 112th Alumni Day ceremonies, which also will recognize student winners of the Jacobus Fellowship and the Pyne Honor Prize. The Alumni Day program will also feature the annual Alumni Association luncheon at Jadwin Gymnasium and the Service of Remembrance at the Princeton Chapel honoring members of the Princeton community whose deaths were recorded by the University in 2026.