Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello

An advocate for using technology that respects nature, she also has promoted since 2019 the creation of Baby Friendly Spaces (BFS) at work, as a way to improve maternal and infant health, with direct breastfeeding by working mothers, and is a member of the NJ Breastfeeding Coalition.

Dominguez-Bello was married to Luis Raul Pericchi, with whom she had one child, Adriana Pericchi Dominguez. She married fellow microbiome researcher Martin J. Blaser in 2013.

She became a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) in 2008 and a member of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2013. In 2015 she received the Arturo Carrion Award from the Puerto Rico Society of Microbiology and became member of the Academy of Sciences of Latin America (ACAL). In 2019 she became fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) program in Humans & the Microbiome.

Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello (born December 3, 1959) is a Venezuelan-American microbial ecologist that has worked on adaptations of gut fermentation organs in animals, gastric colonization by bacteria, assembly of the microbiota in early life, effect of practices that reduce microbiota transmission and colonization in humans, and effect of urbanization. She is the Henry Rutgers Professor of Microbiome and Health at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is the Director of the New Jersey Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health. Her lab at Rutgers collaborates in multidisciplinary science, integrating microbiology, immunology, pediatrics, nutrition, anthropology, environmental engineering and architecture/urban studies, and microbial ecology.

Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello was born in Caracas, Venezuela on 3 December 1959. She went to University Simon Bolivar, where she received her B.S. in Biology in 1983. Dominguez-Bello then attended the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, where she received a Masters degree in nutrition in 1987, followed by a Ph.D. in microbiology in 1990. Her thesis was entitled, "Microbial ecophysiology in the rumen of sheep fed tropical forages." She held two postdoctoral training positions, the first at INRA-Theix in France and the second at Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa at the University Autonoma of Madrid, Spain. She worked at the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research until 2002. She worked at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan from 2002 to 2012, at New York University from 2012 to 2017, and is currently a professor at Rutgers University, and a leading member of Rutgers University Microbiome Program (RUMP).