Joe DeSimone - 2008 Tar Heel of the Year

It's perfect that Joe DeSimone is a chemist.

The science, founded on an ancient quest to turn rocks into gold, is fundamentally preoccupied with transformation.

So, too, is DeSimone, a chemist lauded with the highest honors and a potent force of change in North Carolina and beyond.

Since arriving at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1990, a fresh-out-of-grad-school assistant professor, DeSimone has become one of the nation's premier scientists -- the youngest member named to the National Academy of Engineering and, last summer, winner of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, which many consider a step to the Nobel.

Along the way, he has founded companies, led the university into entrepreneurial ventures, received more than 100 U.S. and international patents, pulled in millions of dollars in federal grants and built a research empire poised to become a major player in the emerging field of nanotechnology.

At 44, DeSimone hasn't even hit midcareer.

"To say he is extraordinary would be an understatement," says Erskine Bowles, president of the University of North Carolina system.

DeSimone's current research in nanotechnology -- mass producing microscopic particles in any size or shape -- could be a blockbuster. Nanoparticles hold promise because, among other things, they can be loaded with chemotherapy drugs or completely composed of medicine, like tiny pills, and home in on disease sites in the body.

"The potential power is quite significant," said Dr. Anna Barker of the National Cancer Institute. On the strength of DeSimone's breakthrough, Barker said, the government agency awarded UNC-CH one of eight national centers for nanotechnology research, providing $5 million a year for five years.

It's the kind of attention that makes DeSimone highly sought after. Keeping him from leaving North Carolina, say Bowles and others, is the academic equivalent of retaining a Dean Smith. Twice DeSimone has been wooed by top universities, and twice he has been persuaded to stay, given salary raises, promotions and other inducements.

What has held DeSimone more than anything, however, is the university's willingness to consider change -- change in the way academic science is conducted, change in how discoveries are brought to the market.

Such an approach is crucial to curing cancer, curbing global warming, creating technologies that improve the world -- the things DeSimone says he wants to do.

"This is how we can solve the greatest problems of our time," he says.

DeSimone doesn't know his IQ, but his mental agility might rank in the freaks-of-nature category.

"He's in the upper 1 percent of people I've dealt with, in terms of brilliance and importance to an institution," said James Moeser, the former chancellor at UNC-CH who helped craft incentive packages to keep DeSimone from leaving.

Friends and colleagues say DeSimone's genius lies in applying complex science to solve everyday problems. It's what caught the attention of the Lemelson-MIT Prize committee, which cited DeSimone for the breadth of his innovations -- from green manufacturing to medical devices to nanomedicine -- and his "unique ability to transfer his novel solutions from the lab to the marketplace."

That ability was evident from the start, when he gained fame in the early 1990s for developing an environmentally friendly dry-cleaning process using carbon dioxide instead of a toxic petrochemical. The process, licensed by UNC-CH, became the foundation for Hangers Cleaners, a dry-cleaning franchise DeSimone founded in 1996.