Rate My Professor Carol Hall

Carol Hall is the Worley H. Clark, Jr. Distinguished University Professor in Engineering and the Camille Dreyfus Distinguished University Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University. She received a B.S. in Physics from Cornell University in 1967 and a Ph.D. in Physics from Stony Brook University in 1972. Following postdoctoral training in Chemistry at Cornell University from 1973 to 1976, she joined the chemical engineering faculty at Princeton University in 1977, where she was awarded the Rheinstein Outstanding Young Faculty Award in 1979. In 1985, Hall moved to North Carolina State University, serving as Alcoa Professor from 1998 to 2005 before her current distinguished appointments. Among her many honors at NC State are the Alumni Association Outstanding Research Award (1992), Alcoa Foundation Distinguished Engineering Research Award (1994), Alumni Association Distinguished Graduate Professorship Award (1998), and R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Extension (2004).

Hall’s research centers on statistical thermodynamics and computer simulations to elucidate molecular mechanisms underlying the self-assembly of soft materials, including colloids, gels, lipids, and surfactants, and the aggregation of proteins linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. Her group also develops algorithms for designing short peptides that bind specific biomolecular targets such as RNA and proteins. This work has profoundly impacted the fields of chemical engineering, soft matter physics, and biophysics. Hall was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2005 for her applications of thermodynamic and simulation methods to macromolecules and complex fluids, and currently serves as its Home Secretary. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (2001), American Physical Society Biophysics Division (2007), and American Association for the Advancement of Science (2019). Other major awards include the AIChE Founders Award (2015), FOMMS Medal (2015), and AIChE Margaret H. Rousseau Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement by a Woman Chemical Engineer (2020). She was listed among AIChE’s “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era” (2008) and served on the AIChE Board of Directors (2009). Notable publications include “Amyloid oligomers: A joint experimental/computational perspective on Alzheimer’s disease...” (Chemical Reviews, 2021), “Molecular dynamics simulations of spontaneous fibril formation by random-coil peptides” (PNAS, 2004), “Polymer-induced phase separations in nonaqueous colloidal suspensions” (Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, 1983), and “Equation of state for chain molecules: Continuous-space analog of Flory theory” (Journal of Chemical Physics, 1986).