Founded in 1739, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is an independent organization whose overall objective is to promote the sciences and strengthen their influence in society. The Academy has about 480 Swedish and 175 foreign members divided into ten scientific disciplines, called classes. Every year the Academy awards the Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, the Crafoord Prize, and a number of other large prizes.

Dr. Persson is director of the Molecular Foundry and a UC Berkeley professor of materials science and engineering. Persson uses atomistic and first-principles computational methods coupled with high-performance computing technology and machine learning to advance materials for clean energy production and storage. She is also the director of the Materials Project, which is a multi-national effort to compute the properties of all inorganic materials and provide the data and associated analysis algorithms free of charge.