Isabel Arends is Dean of the Faculty of Science at Utrecht University and Professor of Sustainable Organic Chemistry.  

As dean she is the head of the faculty of Science which houses the disciplines of Mathematics, Computing Sciences, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, and Pharmacy. Within the university, Isabel Arends is a member of the governing board of the strategic themes of Life Science, and Pathways to Sustainability. She is chairing the board of the leadership program of UU, and is a member of the Supervisory board of Utrecht Holdings. In her faculty she acts as ambassador for the themes of diversity and inclusion, and Open Science. Nationally she is leading a think tank to increase the number of 1st grade academic STEM teachers. 

Before Arends came to Utrecht in 2018, she was professor of Biocatalysis and Organic Chemistry and chair of the Biotechnology department at TU Delft, where she worked on new enzymes that can be used as catalysts for making chemical processes significantly more sustainable. Professor Arends studied physical organic chemistry at Leiden University and obtained her doctorate cum laude in 1993 with a thesis entitled ‘Thermolysis of arene derivatives with coal-type hydrogen donors’. Following a year as a post-doc with the Steacie Institute of Molecular Sciences in Ottawa, Canada, she began work at TU Delft in 1995. She was appointed professor in 2007, and became chair of the Biotechnology department of the Faculty of Applied Sciences (TNW) in 2013. She was director of the online course (MOOC) in industrial biotechnology, and she was vice-chair of the post-graduate school BiotechDelft. In 2016, she founded the TU Delft Bioengineering Institute. Between 2013 and 2018 she was member of the board of NWO-TTW.

Isabel Arends is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW). In April 2018, she was decorated as Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau. In 2020 she received an honorary doctorate from UCLouvain.