Episode 03 - Anjelica Gonzalez and Amanda Pellowe

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This week I was delighted to interview Anjelica Gonzalez and Amanda Pellowe. Anjelica is the Donna L. Dubinsky Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering here at Yale. Her lab develops novel biomaterials to investigate how the immune system responds to a range of inflammatory signals. Anjelica's multidisciplinary approach to biomedical engineering has earned her numerous honors, including being given the Young Innovator Award by the journal Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering. I was also joined by Amanda Pellowe, a 4th year PhD student in Anjelica’s lab. Amanda studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Gettysburg College, and since coming to Yale has been heavily involved in outreach programs in the New Haven area: from coordinating the SCHOLAR engineering program to founding Yale’s chapter of ManyMentors, Amanda has been a tireless advocate for making engineering more accessible.

In this episode, Anjelica explains how her father’s trade as an irrigation technician influenced her to study human vasculature, and how she uses her students’ personal interests to catalyze in them a passion for biomedical engineering. Amanda gives her take on how time management is critical for prioritizing her activities outside of lab, and how the outreach community at Yale has facilitated the success of ManyMentors.

About halfway through the episode, Anjelica talks passionately about how she views the future of underrepresented minority students in engineering.

“I can be an example for you, [but] I can’t be here by myself. I can’t be the only example that is going to be here—I’m going to die eventually! Hopefully that’s not any time soon, but don’t make me the last one. Because if I’m ‘it,’ then my life is wasted.

I have to multiply plenty-fold in this career and bring enough people with me, just like the person who opened the doors for me: I can’t be ‘it.’

So my self-care, in a way, is to make sure that I can open doors for others to take the load off of me to be representative of the community.”

- Anjelica Gonzalez

Links

Gonzalez Lab website – http://seas.yale.edu/faculty-research/faculty-directory/anjelica-gonzalez

A Life of Science Was in the Cards – http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/jobs/lessons-from-mom-serve-a-yale-professor-well.html

ManyMentors website - http://www.manymentors.org/