Cristina Toninelli is Director de Recherche CNRS at Ceremade, University Paris Dauphine since october 2018. She graduated and obtained her PhD in physics at the Universita' La Sapienza (Roma). Afterwards, she shifted towards mathematics and started her research at the interface among probability and mathematical statistical mechanics. After a postdoctoral period at LPT, Ecole Normale de Paris, she obtained a CNRS research position in 2006 and moved to the laboratory LPSM (ex LPMA) of Universite Paris VI et VII.

Her main reserach lines are: Interacting particle systems; Cellular automata and bootstrap percolation; Liquid-glass transitions and jamming transitions. She has worked with  several colleagues, in France and abroad, both in mathematics and physics departments and written about fitfy papers in  journals of probability, mathematical physics and physics.  In 2016 she obtained an ERC Starting Grant. In 2021, she obtained the Marc Yor prize in probability.

She started her activity of thesis director  by codirecting (with T.Bodineau) the PhD thesis of O.Blondel  (2011-2014). Since then she has directed three other PhD students:  L.Mareche et A.Shapira (both obtained their PhD in 2019), and I.Hartarsky (PhD obtained in 2022). At present, she co-directs the PhD thesis of Enguerand Petit. She has also directed several master thesis and three postdocs.