Hall elected to AIChE Board of Directors

Dr. Carol K. Hall, Camille Dreyfus Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University, was recently elected to the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) board of directors. Hall’s three-year term runs from 2010 to 2012.

Founded in 1908, AIChE is a professional association of more than 40,000 members that provides leadership in advancing the chemical engineering profession. Its board of directors regularly meets with local sections, divisions and sister societies and maintains active correspondence with individual AIChE members. Hall was selected in 2008 as one of the organization’s “One Hundred Engineers of the Modern Era.”

Also on the AIChE board is Dr. Phil Westmoreland, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and executive director of NC State’s Institute for Computational Science and Engineering.

Hall, who is a leading researcher in applied thermodynamics and molecular simulation, is credited as a force for modernizing chemical engineering thermodynamics research. She was the first to demonstrate that statistical thermodynamics, which is normally used to describe the behavior of molecules, could also be used to describe the behavior of micron-sized particles. She developed the Generalized Flory Dimer theory and co-developed the Hall-Helfand correlation function.

Hall’s 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 such as Mad Cow disease. In a recent breakthrough, Hall and her colleagues were able to create 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.

A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Hall was one of the first women to be appointed to a chemical engineering faculty in the United States. She joined the NC State faculty in 1985. She is the author of more than 200 journal articles and holds the rank of Fellow in the AIChE and the American Physical Society. Hall earned her Ph.D. in physics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1972.