Dr. Chithalen joins the Wadsworth Center from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services where he served as the Chemistry Program Manager in the Bureau of Laboratory Services, overseeing the LRN-C, FERN and Biomonitoring Chemistry Units. He held an adjunct appointment as Professor of Biochemistry at Saint Anselm College while working in New Hampshire. Before joining the New Hampshire DHHS in 2017, he led programs at the California Department of Public Health for seven years, including as Section Chief of the Microbiology and Biomonitoring Section, Unit Supervisor of the LRN-C Level 1 Laboratory, and as a research scientist in the Chemical Agent & Biotoxins Unit.

Dr. Chithalen earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology at the University of California at Berkeley from 2005 to 2008.

He brings fifteen years of experience as a researcher, scientist and supervisor with expertise in clinical toxicology and clinical chemistry, biomonitoring, community outreach and public engagement, development of methods for separation (HPLC / SPE / liquid extractions) and mass spectral identification (LC-MS/MS, MS, MS/MS, TOF-MS, ICP-MS, GC-MS) of small molecules and their metabolites, in vivo and in vitro metabolic enzyme assays, structure-function analysis and computer modeling of cytochrome P450s, among other chemical and biochemical techniques.