Paul Dayton, William R. Kenan Distinguished Professor, has been appointed as chair of the UNC/NC State Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME). Dayton has served as interim chair of the department since 2019.
Dayton also holds appointments within UNC Chapel Hill’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Eshelman School of Pharmacy.
He succeeds Nancy Allbritton, who left the chair’s position to accept an appointment as dean of engineering at the University of Washington.
His research interests include the areas of biomedical ultrasound imaging, ultrasound mediated targeted therapies and industrial ultrasound applications, and his work has been primarily supported by the National Institutes of Health and various other federal funding agencies and industrial organizations. He is also the co-founder of three startup companies, two of whom are now successfully based in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park.
An outstanding scholar and researcher, Dayton was named a senior member of the National Academy of Inventors in 2021 and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2022.
Dayton received his B.S. in physics and comprehensive science (pre-med) from Villanova University, his M.E. in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia, and his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, also from the University of Virginia. He pursued post-doctoral research and was later on the research faculty at UC-Davis. He joined the BME Department in 2007 as an untenured associate professor and was appointed as associate department chair in 2012, a position he served in until 2019, when he assumed the position of interim chair.
Founded in 2003, the Joint Department is part of the College of Engineering at NC State and both the School of Medicine and College of Arts & Sciences at UNC-CH.
“This appointment represents a strong affirmation of the outstanding job that he has done in this position during the last two years,” leaders from the two universities said in a joint statement.
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