About Danilyn M. Angeles, PhD

Growing up as the oldest child in a poor family, I believed that the best way to improve my future, and to do the most good, was to become a physician. I listened with admiration to the missionaries who visited my church and spoke passionately about their work. Inspired by their stories, I set my heart on becoming a missionary doctor in Africa. I felt prepared for this path: I had graduated as class valedictorian, scored in the 99.96th percentile on my college entrance exam, and was offered a full scholarship to the most prestigious university in my country.

However, God had other plans, and His plans were better than mine. My father was called to serve as a literature evangelist and minister in the United States, and immediately after I graduated from high school, our entire family immigrated. That move alone felt like winning the lottery. Because of limited resources, my father asked me to pursue nursing instead of medicine. I started college at the age of 16 and began my nursing career in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at just 19.

Over the next 20 years, I worked in the NICU in many roles: bedside nurse, transport nurse, educator, nurse manager and director. I cared for critically ill infants in a Learjet, in helicopters, and in the back of ambulances with sirens blaring. Through these experiences, I became deeply skilled in the care of premature infants and increasingly committed to finding better ways to help them. Even more importantly, this work ignited my passion for science and gave me the drive to pursue a doctorate in physiology.

Two years after earning my PhD, I received my first NIH grant and was offered a faculty position at the School of Medicine. Three additional NIH grants soon followed. It was then that I fully realized that God’s plans truly were better than mine. Although my childhood dream of becoming a missionary doctor in a foreign country did not come to pass, I discovered something even more fulfilling: serving God locally as both a teacher and a researcher. My goal is to serve as Jesus serves and love as Jesus loves, and to carry out my work to the best of my ability, trusting that “if I put my trust in Him, He will show me the way I should go.”