Mount Holyoke College wins Jean Dreyfus Lectureship, will host Nobel laureate in chemistry
The College will welcome Jennifer Doudna, who developed the CRISPR-Cas9 technology, to campus.
Mount Holyoke College is a proud recipient of the 2026 Jean Dreyfus Lectureship for Undergraduate Institutions. The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation advances the sciences of chemistry, chemical engineering and related fields to improve human relations and circumstances throughout the world. The College is one of 10 institutions awarded the lectureship this year.
As a result, students can look forward to the rare upcoming opportunity to meet, learn from and gain inspiration from a Nobel laureate in chemistry. Professor Jennifer Doudna, who was honored with the Nobel Prize in 2020, will visit Mount Holyoke under the lectureship.
Doudna is the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences and a professor of biochemistry, biophysics and structural biology at University of California, Berkeley. She and her colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier won the Nobel Prize in 2020 after developing CRISPR-Cas9, the revolutionary gene-editing tool that allows scientists to rewrite DNA. Doudna and Charpentier were the first women to jointly win a Nobel Prize in chemistry, and Doudna’s ongoing work continues to have wide, revolutionary applications across the sciences.
“Mount Holyoke has a very long history of educating and inspiring women in chemistry, which led to an institutional role in producing more women who pursued Ph.D.s than any other undergraduate institution during the mid-twentieth century,” says Associate Dean of Studies and Professor of Chemistry Kathryn A. McMenimen. “The first woman president of the American Chemical Society was a Mount Holyoke faculty member and department chair who was outspoken about the importance of scientific communication and public awareness. We are so pleased to bridge history and continue that trend by bringing a revolutionary woman leader in chemistry, whose work continues to have a global impact, to campus.”
Doudna’s visit will include class visits, opportunities for students to meet with her in small groups and at least two talks: one with a technical focus and one for a broader audience. McMenimen highlights the value of exposing the wider community to Doudna’s work. Doudna, a Pomona College graduate, has a liberal arts background that McMenimen predicts will resonate at Mount Holyoke because it shaped Doudna’s research in science and technology. This liberal arts foundation is part of a broader, interdisciplinary academic ecosystem that is revolutionizing science and technology worldwide.
“She’s used her liberal arts foundation and experience to make cutting-edge discoveries in technology and scientific exploration. At the same time, she is engaged in ethical conversations about these technologies and at the forefront of conversations regarding the role of artificial intelligence in scientific discovery,” McMenimen says of Doudna. “I’m very excited to share this unique opportunity with our community. We’re very fortunate to be able to bring Professor Doudna to campus and to provide our students with an opportunity to see where their liberal arts can take them. Our community will benefit from engaging with her in thoughtful conversations about these cutting-edge and emerging topics.”
McMenimen also notes the opportunity for students to engage with a Nobel Prize laureate. “It’s inspirational for our students to interact with somebody who is really leading the scientific community,” she says. “It’s critical for them to see that and to see what leadership looks like in action.”
In addition to Doudna’s visit, the lectureship will support summer research fellowships for two Mount Holyoke students.
