Dr. Andrea Gonzalez received her PhD (2008) in Psychology and Neuroscience from the University of Toronto and completed her CIHR and Lawson Foundation funded postdoctoral fellowships at the Offord Centre for Child Studies (2012) under the mentorship of Drs. Harriet MacMillan and Michael Boyle.
Currently, she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, with cross-appointments in the Department of Psychology, the Neuroscience Graduate Program, and the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact at McMaster University.
Dr. Gonzalez is also a core member of the Offord Centre for Child Studies. She is an Editorial Board Member for the journals Archives of Women’s Mental Health, Child Abuse & Neglect and Child Maltreatment and holds a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Family Health and Preventive Interventions. Dr. Gonzalez’ research program focuses on the developmental consequences of early life adversity; the impact of traumatic experience on brain development, behavioural outcomes and health; the intergenerational transmission of risk; and developing and evaluating evidence-based preventive interventions.
Her previous training encompasses psychology, neuroscience and epidemiology with specific emphasis on assessing preventive interventions, stress physiology, parenting, and statistical modelling. Dr. Gonzalez is principal investigator on several studies investigating: 1) the intergenerational transmission of risk; 2) preventive interventions and the role of biological mechanisms – of note, Dr. Gonzalez is the PI of the Healthy Foundations Study (biological investigation of the Nurse Family Partnership) and co-PI of the Canadian evaluation of the Family Check-Up and the SafeCare program; and 3) preventive parenting interventions –Promoting Healthy Families evaluation funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada. Dr. Gonzalez adopts a multi-levelled, multi-method approach, collecting behavioural, cognitive and biological measures from mothers and their children (ages 0-6 years) within the context of evidence-based interventions.
