Kathryn A. Whitehead is an Associate Professor and Dean’s Career Fellow in the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering (courtesy) at Carnegie Mellon University. Her lab develops RNA and protein drug delivery systems and has a long-term goal of predicting the behavior of delivery materials in humans. She received an H.B.Ch.E Degree with Distinction from the University of Delaware (2002) and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara (2007) before an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellowship at MIT (2008 – 2012). Prof. Whitehead is the recipient of numerous awards, including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the DARPA Young Faculty 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 currently serves on the society’s Board of Directors. Prof. Whitehead has been named as a Pioneer on the MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 list and as one of the Brilliant Ten by Popular Science. Her publications have been cited over 6,000 times, and several of her patents have been licensed and sublicensed for reagent and therapeutic use.