Chair Christine Payne

The Donald M. Alstadt Chair

Christine Payne’s research focuses on understanding how cells interact with nanomaterials.

Her team uses an interdisciplinary approach that includes elements of materials science, chemistry and biophysics.

This work includes fundamental questions of nanoparticle transport within cells and applied research to understand the pulmonary response to the inhalation of nanoparticles in manufacturing settings.

Cell Interaction With Nanoparticles

Payne teaches courses on the quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics of materials—including the course “Materials Science of Science Fiction.”

She is the Yoh Family Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science and a professor of chemistry at Duke.

She holds an SB in chemistry from the University of Chicago (1998) and a PhD in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley (2003).

Payne spent 2003 to 2006 as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard.

Among her many honors are a Jefferson Science Fellowship with the U.S. Department of State (2023), a DARPA Young Faculty Award (2011) and an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2009). She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.