Worley H. Clark, Jr. Distinguished University Professor Carol Hall has received the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal for Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by NC State and the university’s Board of Trustees. Chancellor Kevin Howell will recognize her and the other awardee during the Celebration of Faculty Excellence on Tuesday, May 5.

The award was named in honor of Alexander Quarles Holladay, NC State’s first professor of history and its first president. This year’s award winners have made outstanding and sustained contributions to the university through achievements in research, teaching, or extension and engagement. Honorees receive an engraved medal and framed certificate, and will also be recognized at NC State’s spring commencement ceremony on May 9.

“This year’s Holladay Medal recipients set the highest standard for research, teaching and service in higher education,” said Chancellor Kevin Howell. “Throughout their respective careers, they have exemplified NC State’s Think and Do attitude and have helped us fulfill our land-grant mission. We are honored to have them as part of our university faculty.”

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Carol Hall

Worley H. Clark, Jr. Distinguished University Professor in Engineering

919-515-3571 hall@ncsu.edu

Hall received her Bachelor of Science in physics from Cornell University and her Ph.D. in physics from Stony Brook University. She joined NC State’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 1985 as an associate professor, rising through the ranks to become the Worley H. Clark, Jr. Distinguished University Professor in Engineering in 2021. Since her arrival, she has received a number of internal and external awards, including election to the National Academy of Engineering, the highest honor bestowed upon an engineer in the United States.

Hall is widely regarded in scientific and engineering circles as an intellectual leader and a pioneer who paves the way for others. Her early use of statistical and molecular thermodynamics to solve engineering problems — long before most chemical engineers recognized its value — played a pivotal role in modernizing applied chemical engineering thermodynamics research. Hall’s most significant accomplishments include: demonstrating that statistical mechanics, which had previously only been applied to systems of molecules, could be used to describe the behavior of systems of particles; establishing her Generalized Flory Dimer Theory, a new approach to developing equations of state for polymers; her pioneering work on simulating protein aggregation, the root cause of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS and the prion diseases; and her current effort to computationally design peptides that bind strongly to protein-based targets, which has application in disease detection and drugs.

Beyond her research, Hall is a dedicated and committed teacher and mentor who has had a transformative effect on her students. She has graduated nearly 50 Ph.D. students and supervised 15 postdocs and visitors throughout her career. She has served on many national committees, including for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the National Science Foundation Triangle Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers, and the National Association of Engineers. At NC State, Hall chaired the Honors Council from 1992-94, and as part of her responsibilities, she helped establish the Holladay Medal at the request of the NC State Board of Trustees.

This is an edited version of the article Emily Packard wrote for NC State University News.