Prof. Katie Whitehead

Official Bio

     Kathryn A. Whitehead is a Professor in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering (courtesy) at Carnegie Mellon University. Her lab develops drug delivery systems for RNA, proteins, and applications in maternal and infant health. She obtained bachelor and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering (Univ. of Delaware; Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) before an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at MIT.

     Prof. Whitehead is the recipient of numerous awards, including the NIH Director's New Innovator Award, the DARPA Director's Fellowship, and the ASEE Curtis W. McGraw Research Award. She has also received the Controlled Release Society's Young Investigator Award and served on its Board of Directors. Prof. Whitehead is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the Controlled Release Society. In 2021, she gave a TED talk on the lipid nanoparticles (i.e., “fat balls”) used in the in the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Her publications have been cited over 9,000 times, and her patents have been licensed and sublicensed for reagent and therapeutic use.

Less Official Bio

     Katie Whitehead grew up in Allentown, PA, with her mom, dad, two younger sisters, and  Mittens, the cat that she swore to her parents that she would take care of but never did. In that latter respect, she was not remarkable. Her mom was a 4th grade Catholic school teacher, and her dad held numerous factory jobs, the last of which was in hard candy at Just Born Candies (e.g. Mike n Ike). Her mom taught her grammar, instilled in her a love of reading, and showed her that it was perfectly normal for women to run the household finances. Her dad taught her the value of hard work and how to love people.

     When Katie went to college, she loved writing, science, and math. She didn't know if she should be an English major or go to Chemical Engineering. Practicality won out, and so she enrolled in engineering, not knowing how much she'd write during her career. It turned out that she didn't so much like undergraduate chemical engineering courses - pipes and reactors, enthalpy and so forth. But she was good at it, and her dear undergraduate advisor, Prof. Jon Olson, told her that she should keep doing it and then go to graduate school, where she could get a Ph.D. in whatever she wanted.

     Dr. Olson was right, and so Katie went off to California for a Ph.D. that was technically in chemical engineering but really was biomedical engineering in the form of drug delivery. Drug delivery is the packaging up of medicine in the right way so that it goes to exactly where it's needed in the body without causing any problems. Katie thinks that the body is the most beautifully engineered system in the world, and she wants to understand how chemistry affects the way materials move inside of it.

     When Katie was finishing her Ph.D., she thought she might want to be a professor. But she wasn't sure this was a good idea, because she didn't see professors who looked like her. She saw men, mostly white men, but not many women or women with kids. And she wanted to have kids someday. She didn't understand how it would work, but it was during her postdoc that she thought she should try. Now, she attemps to provide transparency online and in person with regard to her life as a woman professor with young kids, so that other women might feel as if they can do this, too.

     Few things excite Katie more than highly quality science communication, and she can talk about this for hours with anyone interested. She works with all of her postdocs and students, including in her research group and in her courses, to better their communication skills. We have all been to one too many lectures or seminars where we didn't understand the content of the talk nor why it was important. Katie wants to help scientists maximize the impact of their work while saving audiences worldwide from the pain and suffering of bad presentations.

     Outside of work, Katie spends a lot of time caring for her young children, as they are time vampires. But, they love her and say silly things that cheer her up at the end of long days. However, children are not really a hobby, so she tries to have a couple of real hobbies. She is an avid gardener and plant lover, and every summer she grows about 20 heirloom tomato varietals in her urban garden along zucchini, lettuce, vegetables, and favorite fruits including strawberries and raspberries. She also loves reading and other flow activities, like painting by sticker while listening to lo-fi.