Cristina is Full Professor at the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences at the University of Barcelona and Researcher at the Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio).  For her outstanding research within a Catalan University, she was awarded with a 2019 ICREA Academia by the Catalan Government. After completing her PhD (2006), she performed different research stages at renowned international centres such as the University of Santa Cruz (California, USA), Centre d’Oceanologie de Marseille (France), ARC Centre for Excellence of Coral Reef studies (Townsville, Australia) and the University of Hawaii (Manoa, USA). She is author of 97 SCI publications in international journals such as Science, Science Advances, Ecology letters, Conservation letters, Journal of Ecology, Journal of Applied Ecology, among others. Her research interests mainly focus on understanding the responses of Mediterranean marine benthic communities to global change to provide useful insights for the conservation and restoration of Mediterranean marine coastal ecosystems. To do this, she combines long-term series data, experimental studies using in situ and aquaria experiments and spatial and demographic modelling tools. Most of the results derived from her research activity aimed at contributing to the conservation of marine ecosystems and this is reflected in several activities of knowledge transfer to entities and public administrations.