Cristina Banuelos

Cristina Bañuelos is a third-year MD-PhD student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with her Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience with a cognitive and computational focus. During undergrad, her research applied graph-theoretic structural topology measures to diffusion MRI to analyze brain network features in decision-making. After graduation, she worked on a project showing how differences in feedback learning pathways influence action promotion and suppression, potentially explaining abnormal decision-making in addiction-related disorders.

She is completing her PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies in Biomedical Sciences at Mount Sinai, and works in the labs of Xiaosi Gu and Ignacio Saez. She plans to continue to apply reinforcement learning models to gain insights into decision-making disorders, as well as incorporating intracranial electrophysiology to connect her computational models with neural models.

At Mount Sinai she served as Co-President of Sinai’s Latino Medical Student Association Chapter, Sinai’s Association of Women Surgeons chapter, and the Neurosurgery Interest Group. She is currently serving as a leader for Sinai’s Women in MSTP, and as the Research and Analytics Chair for the National Latino Medical Student Association organization. In the classroom and clinic, she has also served as Course Representative and Teacher Assistant for Brain and Behavior, as well as a volunteer at EHHOP as Spanish Interpreter and as Mental Health senior Clinician.

In her free time, Cristina enjoys exploring new restaurants and coffee shops throughout NYC, embarking on road trips, and spending time in Central Park. A fun fact about Cristina is that she has a huge family: she has 4 younger sisters, 14 aunts and uncles, and over 50 first cousins!