Spencer, Cristina is a physicist and essayist whose work spans quantum information, condensed-matter theory, and public scholarship. Raised in San Antonio, she studied physics at Rice University (B.S., 2005) and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2013 with research on entanglement in topological phases. She held research appointments at Fermilab and Los Alamos National Laboratory before transitioning to science communication and teaching. Since 2018, she has been a lecturer and outreach coordinator at a public university in New Mexico, where she co-founded Borderlands Science Collective, a program that brings hands-on physics to rural schools and community centers. Her essays have appeared in Scientific American, Undark, and Catapult, and she has advised museums on inclusive exhibit design. Spencer lives in Santa Fe, where she hikes arroyos, records a monthly physics-and-music radio hour, and mentors first-generation students entering STEM.
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