Interview with Anjelica Gonzalez, associate professor of biomedical engineering, and Faculty Director of the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale. Gonzalez explains the origins of the Center and the challenges of getting it started during the pandemic. She recounts her familys diverse background and her childhood in Las Vegas. Gonzalez describes her early interests in science and her undergraduate experience at Utah State, where she focused on biomedical engineering. She discusses the opportunities that led to her graduate studies at Rice, where she conducted thesis research on neutrophil engagement with soft tissue mimetics and her interest in applying therapies for sepsis. Gonzalez describes her research assistantship at Yale to work with Mark Saltzman and Jordan Pober, and she explains the collaborative nature of immunobiology research. She describes her faculty appointment and the positive changes that Yale has embraced in advancing diversity and inclusion, and she explains why biomimetic development is at the heart of her research and how this work could be useful for Covid research and therapies. At the end of the interview, Gonzalez reflects on the ways science benefits when it embraces diversity, and she conveys optimism for the positive health impacts that her future research can yield.