Cristina Davis

Dr. Cristina Davis is a Professor and Chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Davis (Davis, CA), where she is the Warren and Leta Geidt Endowed Professor.  She is also an Associate Director of the UC Davis NIH-funded NCATS center on translational medicine.  Her research group focuses on creating miniature analytical sensor systems for mobile chemical detection platforms.  Final system integration of her devices yields analyzers that are specifically tailored for various high impact application areas including biomedical monitoring and surveillance for precision medicine.  Prof. Davis earned her BS degree (1994) at Duke University with a double major in mathematics and biology. She went on to complete her MS (1996) and PhD (1999) in biomedical engineering at the University of Virginia focusing on novel biosensor research. She then worked on silicon-chip based biosensors during a postdoctoral fellowship at The Johns Hopkins University.  Along with a group of co-founders, she worked in industry in Switzerland to establish a start-up company developing MEMS-based screening platforms for the pharmaceutical industry, and their company was acquired by Molecular Devices Corporation.  She ultimately went on to become a Principal Member of the Technical Staff and the founding Group Leader of Bioengineering at The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory (Cambridge, MA).  Her previous research experience includes MEMS sensor development for chemical and biological detection in austere environments, and she also led national research efforts to develop human odor scent biometrics applications.  Having spent almost a half-decade in industry, she returned to academics in November 2005.  She served as a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) for the United States Air Force (2014-2018), and is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and National Academy of Inventors (NAI).  She is a Co-Founder and Scientific Advisor to two UC Davis affiliated start-ups based on her research. She is the incoming chair-elect of the International Association of Breath Research (IABR).