Melania Cristescu

Melania Elena Cristescu is a Romanian–Canadian biologist and ecologist. She is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Ecological Genomics at McGill University and the Co-Editor of Genome.

Early life Born in Brașov, Cristescu chose her career while examining aquatic habitats in the Danube Delta or exploring trails and caves of the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania during her childhood summer vacations. The French oceanographer and explorer Jacques Cousteau influenced her.

Cristescu's area of research is ecological genetics and genomics and her primary research organism is the microcrustacean Daphnia. Her other research areas include the nature and scale of recombination and mutation rate variation across genomes, the genetics of aquatic invasions, and speciation in ancient lakes.