Cristina studied Pharmacy at University of Granada (UGR) in Spain and won the award for the best academic performance of her year. Alongside her MPharm studies, she was a research fellow in the Béjar Luque Group at the UGR, working on the characterization of hypersalinic bacteria. During the summer of 2017, she pursued an internship at the Alexandrov Group at EMBL in Heidelberg (European Molecular Biology Laboratory), where she worked on the development of imaging mass spectrometry workflows. In summer 2018, she worked at the Cid-Arregui Lab at DKFZ in Heidelberg (German Cancer Research Center) working on tumor immunotherapy, where she carried out her Bachelor Thesis, which was awarded as the Best Bachelor Thesis of her promotion in UGR. During her last year of Pharmacy studies, she also collaborated at the Nanochembio lab at GENYO Research Centre in Granada, funded by a Ministry Scholarship, working on functionalization and characterization of nanoparticles. 

Additionally, she has a strong interest in science communication and has given talks and seminars on the role of women in science at her home University. 

She completed her PhD co-supervised by Dr. Ljiljana Fruk and Daniel Muñoz-Espín in 2024.