Kathryn Whitehead

Kathryn Whitehead is a translational drug delivery researcher, known for work on lipid nanoparticles, who left Carnegie Mellon University to join the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Applied Science and School of Biomedical Engineering in Vancouver, Canada, as an Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada.

The appointment was announced August 27, 2026 as part of UBC's first cohort of nine Eddie Goldenberg Research Chairs recruited from leading US institutions, with her move set to begin in summer 2027.

Whitehead's lab engineers lipid nanoparticles, the fatty particles that protect and deliver RNA therapeutics to diseased cells. Most existing lipid nanoparticles reach only the liver, so her research designs and tests large libraries of new lipid chemistries to direct nanoparticles toward the lungs, brain, and other organs, targeting conditions including cystic fibrosis, pulmonary fibrosis, and neurological diseases like Huntington's and Fragile X syndrome. Her program will also study how sex, pregnancy, and menopause change how these medicines work, an area she says the field has largely overlooked, including single-dose RNA therapies for pregnancy complications like preeclampsia designed to be safely discontinued after birth.

Whitehead was drawn to UBC as the birthplace of lipid nanoparticle science, citing decades of ecosystem-building by biochemist Pieter Cullis and the opportunity to collaborate with researchers like Anna Blakney on lipid nanoparticle immunology. She earned her PhD in chemical engineering from UC Santa Barbara in 2007, advised by Samir Mitragotri, and her bachelor's degree in chemical engineering, with distinction and a minor in mathematics, from the University of Delaware in 2002.