About

Dr. Courtney E. Gonzalez studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah) on a full academic scholarship. Her undergraduate research included internships at the Kimberly Clark Corporation and a research assistantship in the lab of Dr. Leonard F. Pease, developing a novel technique to detect eosinophilic esophagitis. She graduated cum laude with departmental honors from the College of Engineering and the Honors College in 2010.

She did her doctoral studies in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the lab of Dr. Marc Ostermeier at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland). Her research focused on characterizing the fitness landscape of the antibiotic resistance protein, TEM-1 beta-lactamase, using next-generation DNA sequencing. In 2012, she was awarded the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Predoctoral Fellowship.

A passionate teacher, she was awarded the George M.L. Sommerman Engineering Graduate Teaching Assistant Award for the Whiting School of Engineering in 2013, and received a Teaching Academy Certificate in 2016. She guest lectured in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department and the Biology department. In Spring 2017, she was an instructor for MATLAB Made Easy, an introductory computer programming course for engineering students.

Her research interests include molecular evolution, protein engineering, antibiotic resistance, and metagenomics. She is particularly interested in using NGS technology and data science to solve problems that impact human health.

Courtney is currently working as a Bioinformatics Scientist at IDbyDNA in Salt Lake City, Utah.