Cristina Garmendia Mendizábal was born in San Sebastián (Guipúzcoa, Spain) in 1962. In 1980 she moved to Seville, making her first contacts with the city’s scientific community whilst studying for a degree in Biology, specialising in Genetics, graduating in 1985.

Wishing to further her scientific training, she moved to Madrid, where she combined her PhD research project under the supervision of Dr. Margarita Salas at the Severo Ochoa Centre for Molecular Biology with work as Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics and Molecular Biology (Universidad Autónoma, Madrid), attached to the same research centre.