News Release

Chemistry professor Holden Thorp
to speak at December commencement

CHAPEL HILL - Dr. Holden Thorp, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chemistry professor with a passion for music and a history of service, will deliver the December commencement address, Chancellor James Moeser announced today (Oct. 4).

Moeser will preside at the ceremony, set for 2 p.m. Dec. 17 at the Dean E. Smith Center.

"Holden Thorp is one of our star faculty members," Moeser said. "He's a leading chemist, a great classroom teacher, a musician and a Tar Heel born and bred. He will be an absolute inspiration to our graduates."

Thorp, who plays jazz bass and keyboard, is the Kenan professor of chemistry and chair of the chemistry department in the College of Arts and Sciences. He was the director of the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center from 2001 to 2005 and is faculty director of fundraising for the Carolina Physical Science Complex, a $205 million facility that is the largest construction project in the university's history.

Moeser chose Thorp in close consultation with the university's commencement speaker selection committee. The committee, chaired by Executive Associate Provost Steve Allred, is made up of an equal number of students and faculty.

Thorp said he plans to use his December address to draw connections between science and other interests and to convey the importance of human factors in innovation.

"What I hope to tell people is that success in anything, including science, requires an understanding of the human element," he said.

"I'll try to connect how innovation arises in multiple fields to try to get people to see how originality and creativity are common themes underlying advances in disparate disciplines."

As director of the Morehead Center, Thorp expanded the original emphasis of the planetarium to encompass science education in new areas. He also established momentum for the Morehead Center's first major renovation since its construction in 1947.

Thorp, a Fayetteville native, has won more than a dozen teaching- and research-related honors: the Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Philip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement, the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.

He was named in 2002 an honorary member of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the campus' oldest honorary society, and also that year was named the UNC General Alumni Association Distinguished Young Alumnus.

Thorp holds 18 U.S. patents and has published more than 130 academic papers. He writes a column for Wake County Physician magazine and has written opinion editorials for The News and Observer and The New York Times.

Thorp has been on several university committees, boards or task forces over the course of the last decade. He is on the Morehead Scholarship central selection committee; the Chancellor's Advisory Committee; the Faculty Working Group for the Performing Arts; and he is leading an effort to create a minor in scientific entrepreneurship as part of the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative, a campuswide effort designed to help UNC students, faculty and staff learn to create successful new ventures of all kinds.

Thorp attended UNC and received his bachelor of science degree, with highest honors, in chemistry in 1986. He went on to receive his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology in 1989. He came to UNC in 1993 as assistant professor of chemistry.

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Photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/faculty/thorp_holden.jpg

(Jim Walsh, a junior journalism and mass communication major from Winston-Salem, wrote this release for UNC News Services.)

News Services contact: Lisa Katz, (919) 962-2093 or lisa_katz@unc.edu