Christine Payne Begins Tenure as Chair of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science at Duke

Christine Payne has begun her new appointment as the Donald M. Alstadt Chair of Duke’s Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science (MEMS).

A forward-thinking, interdisciplinary expert in understanding how nanoparticles interact with biological systems, an award-winning, innovative educator, and a faculty leader, Payne will grow and advance Duke MEMS through her term, which began January 1, 2025 and runs through June 30, 2028.

“I am very excited to welcome Christine to the Pratt School of Engineering leadership team,” said Vinik Dean Jerome P. Lynch. “During her time at Duke, she has distinguished herself as a brilliant researcher and an inspiring teacher. It is through her recent leadership of the MEMS’s Strategic Vision Committee that Christine has shown her talents as a visionary leader, defining an exciting future of mechanical engineering and materials science.”

Payne, the Yoh Family Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, has been a member of the Duke MEMS faculty since 2018.

Beginning her career in live cell imaging and nanoscience at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in 2007, Payne works to understand, on a molecular level, how proteins and cells interact with nanomaterials. She then uses this knowledge to better regulate human exposure to nanomaterials and to predict nanomaterial-protein interactions, thereby increasing the pace and reducing the cost of nanomaterial development.

The Payne Lab has several ongoing projects in this realm, including studying the pulmonary response to titanium dioxide nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and using lab automation and machine learning to predict how these and other nanomaterials will interact with proteins and cells, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Another NIH-funded project is using a model system of DNA and nanoparticles to better understand autoimmune diseases with a focus on lupus. These projects are highly collaborative and include researchers from Duke’s School of Medicine and NC State University.Payne is also a prolific contributor to two large research centers.

One team, based at Duke, is working to develop better treatments for kidney stones through the use of nanofluids, funded by the National Institutes of Health. The second team, the National Science Foundation-Simons Foundation Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology headquartered at Georgia Tech, pairs bioengineers and bioscientists with mathematicians to address new questions in biology with advances in mathematics.

“The Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke is an amazing group of faculty, staff and students,” Payne said. “I’m really looking forward to working together to advance our research and education efforts.”

Payne is also an award-winning educator, having been named a Bass Fellow by Duke in 2020, a distinction that recognizes true excellence in both research and education. S

he teaches classes on the quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics of materials, including a class on the “Materials Science of Science Fiction.” A student favorite, the class encourages students to use their own analytical superpowers to separate science from fiction, assessing and testing the limits of materials both real and imagined.

Payne earned an S.B. in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1998 and a PhD in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. She spent 2003-2006 as an NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. She has received many honors, including an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2009) and a DARPA Young Faculty Award (2011). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and served as a Jefferson Science Fellow with the U.S. Department of State in 2024.