Cristina Cenciarelli is a native of Rome, Italy. She received her first master’s degree in Science and a Ph.D. in biology at the La Sapienza University of Rome. In addition, she received another master’s degree in Teaching Italian as a Second Language from the University of Siena, Italy. She traveled to the United States and earned a postdoctoral Fogarty fellowship at Bethesda's National Institutes of Health.

Cristina has worked at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and the Rockefeller University in New York City as a research scientist. She also served as an Assistant Professor of Italian Language at Loyola University in Baltimore before moving to Denver.

Dr. Cenciarelli currently serves as International Scholars Outreach Coordinator for the Office of International Affairs at the University of Colorado in Denver.