Dr. Gonzales attended Queensborough Community College, majoring in chemistry. In 2008, He became a MARC scholar at Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY), where he received his Bachelor's degree in biochemistry. In 2017, he obtained his PhD in chemistry from the Graduate School and University Center of CUNY, where he built his interest in near infrared dyes, chelations and biomedical applications with porphyrin sensors. The same year, he joined the Radiology Department of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he was trained in the translation of his synthetic probes from the bench to the pre-clinical setting. In 2021, Junior was named to SNMMI's "Ones to Watch 2021", a national award recognizing outstanding young scientists in the nuclear and molecular imaging field. The same year he was awarded the NIH MOSAIC K99/R00 grant to start his independent research.