Two alumni from the University of Florida College of Pharmacy have been named to the 2021 40 Gators Under 40 Outstanding Young Alumni list. Karen Berger, Pharm.D., and Daniel Gonzalez, Pharm.D., Ph.D. made the list, which honors those whose achievements positively impact the Gator Nation by going greater in their communities and professions.
Berger is a neurocritical care clinical pharmacy manager at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical Center. After receiving her Doctor of Pharmacy from UF in 2009, she went on to complete her PGY1 pharmacy residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital and her PGY2 critical care residency at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago, where she acted as chief resident. Berger currently serves as a member-at-Large for the Society of Critical Care Medicine, or SCCM, Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacology Section, member of the Neurocritical Care Society Pharmacy Section Leadership Committee, Chair of the New York State Council of Health-system Pharmacists, or NYSCHP, Grassroots Advocacy Committee and this year’s NYSCHP Annual Assembly Committee Chair. She has received the SCCM Presidential Citation for the past four years, the Neurocritical Care Society Presidential Citation for the past three years and in 2016 received the NYSCHP New Practitioner Award.
Gonzalez is an associate professor in the division of pharmacotherapy and experimental therapeutics at the University of North Carolina Eshelman School of Pharmacy. He has an adjunct appointment within the department of pediatrics in the UNC School of Medicine. He joined the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in 2014 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship through the UNC-Duke Collaborative Clinical Pharmacology T32 Postdoctoral Training Program. Gonzalez received his Pharm.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Florida College of Pharmacy in 2008 and 2012, respectively. His research interests include pediatric clinical pharmacology and the application of mathematical modeling and simulation techniques to characterize the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs, guide drug dosage selection and improve drug safety in children. Gonzalez’s research program is funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and he has published more than 75 peer-reviewed publications and more than 40 abstracts.