She graduated from USC with a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering with an emphasis in Biology in 1997. She then attended the University of California at Berkeley, where she earned her Ph.D. in 2001 in Chemical Engineering under Jay D. Keasling. Before starting her position at Caltech, Christina conducted a two year postdoctoral fellowship in the Cell Biology Department at UC Berkeley under Karsten Weis. Her lab’s research projects include the design of molecular switches that act in vivo as both biosensors and ligand-controlled regulators of gene expression. This work involves gene regulation mechanisms such as the RNA interference (RNAi) pathway, ribozyme-based cleavage, and the antisense pathway. Her lab hopes to integrate molecular switches into synthetic and endogenous cellular networks and to potentially use nucleic acid switches as molecular recognition components of nanosensor devices.