Maria Cristina Lorenzi is laboratory Manager at the psychiatry and clinical psychobiology Unit, at IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele. She has been coordinating the molecular biological research activities on the genetic basis of the most relevant neuro-psychiatric pathologies for the last 20 years, focusing on mood disorders (depression and bipolar disorder), schizophrenia and anxiety (obsessive disorder and panic disorder). As a molecular biologist, Cristina conducted genetic screening studies on individuals with psychiatric disorder. She has expertise in non-enzymatic techniques for DNA-extraction from blood or saliva, Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism-Polymorphism Chain reaction (RFLP-PCR) techniques and Sanger sequencing.  She is collaborating with the Genomics core of the Center for Omics Sciences since 2016, getting expertise in Next Generation Sequencing techniques, i.e. Whole-Genome Sequencing (WGS), Epigenetic Analyses (ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq, DNA methylation analyses – RRBS, Illumina arrays, meDIP), RNA-seq (miRNA-seq) and applying them to genetic screening of neuropsychiatric pathologies. She has also biochemical expertise, achieved by evaluating the neuroinflammatory basis of psychiatric disease, with Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA), Luminex Technique (Bio-Plex).

Along with scientific research, she has also developed strong soft skills. She has supervised several students in Biological Science, Medicine and Biotechnology during their thesis, has acted as a project evaluator for Marie Curie Research Grants (VI VII Quadro Program and Horizon 2020) and other research projects. She also wrote several grants herself. Cristina is the author of over hundreds of publications in scientific journals and conference proceedings.