Dr. Carol K. Hall, the Camille Dreyfus Distinguished University Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University, is a leading researcher in applied thermodynamics and molecular simulation.  A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Dr. Hall has been cited for “applications of modern thermodynamic and computer-simulation methods to chemical engineering problems involving macromolecules and complex fluids.”

Dr. Hall is widely credited as a force for modernizing chemical engineering thermodynamics research.  She performed the first Monte Carlo simulations of the phase change behavior of hydrogen in metals in the late 1970s and was the first to demonstrate that statistical thermodynamics could be used to describe the behavior of micron-sized particles, explaining why polymer-colloid systems exhibit phases analogous to gas, liquid and solid.  She co-developed the Hall-Helfand correlation function, a model for polymer conformational state relaxation that has become the standard comparison for NMR relaxation and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy measurement.  In the mid-1980s she developed the Generalized Flory Dimer theory, a simple, physically intuitive approach that is considered an important contribution to the advancement of research in polymer equations of state.

Her recent work focuses on the formation of ordered protein aggregates called amyloid fibrils, a cause or associated symptom of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and the prion diseases (e.g., Mad Cow disease).  In a recent breakthrough, Dr. Hall and her colleagues created a computer model that simulates how amyloid fibrils form – a step that may lead to discoveries of how to slow or halt the disease process.

Dr. Hall was one of the first women to be appointed to a chemical engineering faculty in the United States.  In 2006, Dr. Hall was the first woman to deliver the Institute Lecture at the Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.  The author of more than 180 journal articles, Dr. Hall serves on the editorial board of five scientific journals. She earned her bachelors degree from Cornell and her master's and doctoral degrees from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1972.

The endowed lectures honor the memory of Professor Thomas Leland, a distinguished researcher and teacher who had been a member of our department from the early 1950s until his death in 1986.