Karina received her B.S. in Chemistry and Biology from the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes (Aguascalientes, Mexico), her M.S. in Applied Biotechnology from the Center for Applied Biotechnology – National Polytechnic Institute (Tlaxcala, Mexico), and her Ph.D. in Biotechnology from the Center for Research and Advanced Studies (CINVESTAV, Mexico City, Mexico) and the National Laboratory for Genomics of Biodiversity (LANGEBIO, Irapuato, Mexico).

Karina will join the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona in January 2026, after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Carnegie Science (MD, USA). Her research focuses on elucidating the complexities of microbiota–host interactions at the genomic and molecular levels, with a particular emphasis on bacterial natural products—small molecules synthesized by biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs).