Dr Rodriguez-Rivera was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He completed his B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez and then moved north and earned an M.S. degree at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He worked for seven years in the technology transfer of new products at Bristol Myers Squibb in Puerto Rico. Motivated by his interest in academia and learning about biomaterials, he decided to obtain his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Gabriel completed his dissertation on injectable hydrogel electrodes in Dr. Cosgriff-Hernandez’s lab, and co-advised by Dr. Rosales. He received the Pre-Doctoral and Dissertation Fellowships from the Ford Foundation and a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) with funding provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF). He continues his research in biomaterials for cardiac applications at the University of Colorado at Boulder under the mentorship of Dr. Jason Burdick. He is a co-founder of the Graduates for Underrepresented Minorities (GUM) at UT-Austin, and the LatinXinChE community.