Anjelica L. Gonzalez is an American biomedical engineer and scientist. She is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Yale University, and is part of the Vascular Biology and Therapeutics Program. Her work focuses primarily on biomimetic materials, or the development of materials that mimic human organs, to study how drugs and other medical interventions can reverse tissue damage caused by environmental pollutants, inflammation, and diseases. She is also the principal investigator for the "PremieBreathe" device which has developed a low-cost device designed to save the lives of premature babies in settings that lack safe respiratory devices.
Gonzalez's cultural background is Mexican-American and African-American. She grew up Las Vegas, Nevada, and in the Moapa Valley in Nevada. She was raised along with her brother by a single mother who is a blackjack dealer. Her grandfather was director of the Moapa Valley irrigation system and was an early inspiration for her scientific career. She has also discussed being scientifically influenced by her father, a diesel mechanic, who instilled the principles of engineering, and by her mother's mathematical skills.
Gonzalez attended high school in Las Vegas, and went on to attend Utah State University in Logan, Utah. In 1999, Anjelica received her Bachelor of Science in Biological Engineering. She initially planned to pursue a career in computational irrigation management, but later began taking biology courses that eventually influenced her change of career course. Also influencing this decision was a Baylor University summer program where she worked with pulmonary specialist Dr. Aladin Boriek. Gonzalez describes this experience as "the first realization that I had that the math, computational skills, the understanding of mechanics and physics, could translate to the physiological system, to human biology." During her time at Baylor, she worked under Larry McIntire, who she found to be very influential for his work in engineering.
Upon graduating, Gonzalez became the first person from her family to receive a bachelor's degree. In 2004, she obtained her Doctor of Philosophy in Computational Biology from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.
During her time at Baylor College of Medicine, Gonzalez was only one of a few minority students in her program, and the only woman actively participating as a graduate student.
Her interests also extend to training the next generation of scientists encouraging them to use a scientifically global perspective to approach problems as well as think in a broader, interdisciplinary way. Her lab, Gonzalez Lab, combines mathematics, molecular biology, chemistry, computational modeling and image analysis alongside engineered scaffolds to break apart immunological processes' chemo-mechanics. Through these methods, they have been able to make a notable advancement specifically in an array of disorders and diseases not limited to, but including stroke, fibrosis, vascular inflammation and sepsis.
After graduating from Baylor, Gonzalez conducted post-doctoral work in the Leukocyte Biology and Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Texas Children's Hospital. She joined the Yale faculty as an associate research scientist in 2007. After two years in this role, she joined the Yale biomedical engineering faculty and in 2014 was appointed the Donna L. Dubinsky Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering. As of 2022 she is an appointed associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Yale University.
At Yale, Gonzalez developed PremieBreathe, a low-cost mobile neonatal respiratory device meant to treat the breathing problems of prematurely born babies. PremieBreathe was developed and studied in Ethiopia and is supported by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and NCIIA/Venturewell. She is also a founder of Aero Therapeutics, which produces the device.
In 2020, she was also appointed faculty director of the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale University (Tsai CITY). In 2022, Gonzalez was appointed head of Davenport College, making her the first Black woman to serve as head of college in Yale's history.
Her areas of research include:
Gonzalez has twin sons and resides in New Haven, Connecticut. She plays the violin and enjoys sewing her own clothing. Her favorite baseball player is Shohei Oheitani.
Anjelica has earned numerous awards and distinctions. Here are a selection:
Gonzalez has more than 60 publications. Her most cited work has been cited over 1814 times
Here is a selection of her works that have been cited over 70 times each:
SK Lee, GS Kim, Y Wu, DJ Kim, Y Lu, M Kwak, L Han, JH Hyung, JK Seol, ... Nano Letters
C Ryu, H Sun, M Gulati, JD Herazo-Maya, Y Chen, A Osafo-Addo, ... American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine
V Njike, Z Faridi, S Dutta, AL Gonzalez-Simon, DL Katz Nutrition Journal
AL Gonzalez, AS Gobin, JL West, LV McIntire, CW Smith Tissue engineering
Gonzalez has contributed opinion articles to multiple publications, including:
Gonzalez speaks out for women and minorities: