Daniela Gonzalez to Address Northeastern's 2026 Boston Graduate Commencement
A celebration of scholarship, scientific impact, and a remarkable journey from the bench to the model. Neural Dynamics is proud to see Daniela take the stage at Fenway Park.
On April 29, 2026, Northeastern University celebrates its 2026 Boston Graduate Commencement at Fenway Park, and the Neural Dynamics Group is delighted to share that one of our own, Daniela Gonzalez, has been selected as a Boston Graduate Commencement Speaker. Daniela will address her fellow graduates on a stage that has, for six consecutive years, become synonymous with the milestone moments of Northeastern’s graduating class.
Being chosen to speak at the Boston Graduate Commencement is among the highest honors Northeastern can bestow on a graduate student. Speakers are selected for the strength of their scholarship, the quality of their leadership, and the breadth of their contributions to the university community. Daniela exemplifies all three.
A Journey from the Bench to the Model
Daniela holds a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences and a B.S. in Biotechnology from Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina. Before coming to Northeastern, she developed machine-learning pipelines for biologics in the pharmaceutical industry, with hands-on expertise in molecular docking, QSAR modeling, and cancer cell line assays. Few researchers move so fluently between the wet lab and the model, and fewer still bring that combined fluency to bear on questions of clinical consequence.
At Northeastern, Daniela completed her M.S. in Data Science while serving as a Graduate Research Associate with the Neural Dynamics Group at the Institute for Experiential AI. Her work has come to define what we look for in a Neural Dynamics researcher: technically deep, scientifically grounded, and committed to research that crosses disciplinary boundaries.
Research at Neural Dynamics
Daniela’s research at Neural Dynamics focuses on deep learning for drug combination synergy and the prediction of therapeutic windows for personalized cancer treatment. Treating complex diseases like cancer almost always requires combinations of drugs, yet the combinatorial space is vast, preclinical screening is expensive, and most existing models stop short of the experimental validation that would allow predictions to inform clinical decisions. Daniela’s work aims to close that gap.
By integrating tumor transcriptomics with rich molecular drug representations, she is extending deep-learning architectures to predict not only synergy but also the safety margins that determine whether a combination is clinically viable. Her insistence on grounding computational predictions in biological and clinical reality has shaped the way the group thinks about translational machine learning. With over ten peer-reviewed publications spanning early drug discovery, computational biology, and data science, her contributions speak for themselves.
A Year of Recognition
Daniela’s commencement role caps a remarkable academic year. Earlier this month, she was named to the 2026 Laurel and Scroll 100, Northeastern’s century-old honor recognizing the university’s top graduate students. She has also been recognized by Khoury College, where her data science journey will be celebrated alongside the rest of the graduating class. Each of these honors reflects a different facet of her scholarship: research excellence, university citizenship, and the kind of communication that lifts an entire community.
For more on Daniela’s research and the Laurel and Scroll induction, see our earlier feature, Two Neural Dynamics Researchers Named to the Laurel and Scroll 100.
Congratulations, Daniela
From the entire Neural Dynamics Group: congratulations, Daniela. Your scholarship has shaped our group, your perspective has sharpened our work, and your voice will carry far beyond Fenway Park on Sunday. We are proud to have walked part of this journey with you, and we cannot wait to see what comes next.
