I am currently a Research Chemist at Enthone Inc. where I am responsible for the development of new chemical additives for copper electroplating applications.
I received my PhD Organic Chemistry from Northeastern University. I was a part of the Center for Drug Discovery under the direction of Dr. Alex Makriyannis. Here my work focused on synthesizing covalent endocannabinoid ligands to probe the cannabinoid receptors, chemically and metabolically stable 2-arachidonoylglycerol analogs, and N-acylethanolamine hydrolyzing acid amidase inhibitors.
My undergraduate education was completed at the University of New Haven, where I obtained a B.S. in Chemistry and a B.S. in Forensic Science.
Publications: (Click on citation for a link to article)
Whitten, K. M.; Makriyannis, A.; Vadivel, S. K., Enzymatic Synthesis of N-Acylethanolamines: Direct Method for the Aminolysis of Esters. Tetrahedron Letters 2012. Accepted http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tetlet.2012.08.042
West, J. M.; Zvonok, N.; Whitten, K. M.; Vadivel, S. K.; Bowman, A. L.; Makriyannis, A. Biochemical and Mass Spectrometic Characterization of Human N-acylethanolamine-hydrolyzing Acid Amidase Inhibition. PLoS One 2012, 7 (8), e43877.
Whitten, K.M.; Makriyannis, A.; Vadivel, S.K., Application of chemoenzymatic hydrolysis in the synthesis of 2-monoacylglycerols. Tetrahedron 2012, 68 (27-28), 5422-5428.
West, J. M.; Zvonok, N.; Whitten, K. M.; Wood, J. T.; Makriyannis, A., Mass Spectrometric Characterization of Human N-acylethanolamine-hydrolyzing Acid Amidase. J. Proteome Res., 2012, 11 (2), pp 972–981
Vadivel, S. K.; Whitten, K. M.; Makriyannis, A., Chemoenzymatic synthesis of 2-arachidonoylglycerol, an endogenous ligand