Institute Lecture

This year’s Institute Lecture presently planned for Wednesday afternoon, November 15th, will be presented by: DR. CAROL K. HALL, Alcoa Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NC State, was named to National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in Feb of 2005.  The Topic to be announced is expected to relate to Dr. Hall’s research interests.
 
Institute Lecturer - DR. CAROL K. HALL, Camille Dreyfus Distinguished University Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NC State, was named to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in Feb of 2005.  Membership in the NAE recognizes those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education.”

Institute Lecture Topic - The pathological hallmark of more than twenty neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and the prior diseases, is the presence within the brain of plaques containing ordered protein aggregates called fibrils. It is not yet known why these structures form in some individuals and not in others, or whether the plaques are toxic or Nature's way of sequestering toxic species.  Dr. Hall will describe current thinking on the scientific underpinnings for this phenomenon, and her computational efforts to contribute to our knowledge of how and why proteins assemble into fibrils.

Dr. Hall, who is a leading researcher in applied thermodynamics and molecular simulation, is credited as a force for modernizing chemical engineering thermodynamics research. The NAE cited her contributions in “applications of modern thermodynamic and computer-simulation methods to chemical engineering problems involving macromolecules and complex fluids.”

Dr. Hall 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. 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 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. Dr. 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. The author of more than 170 journal articles, Dr. Hall serves on the editorial board of six scientific journals. She earned her Ph.D. in physics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1972.