Sara Garcia Alonso

Sara García-Alonso is a senior researcher at the National Cancer Research Center and a member of the astronaut reserve of the European Space Agency. She graduated in Biotechnology from the University of León as the top of her class, receiving several awards for academic excellence. During her university career, she trained in various laboratories and completed her Master’s degree specializing in Biomedicine. She later moved to the Cancer Research Center (2013-2018), where she earned her PhD cum laude in Molecular Biology of Cancer and Translational Medicine, receiving the Extraordinary Doctorate Award for the best doctoral thesis in Medicine from the University of Salamanca. In 2019, she joined Dr. Mariano Barbacid’s laboratory at CNIO. In November 2022, Sara was selected from nearly 23,000 candidates as a reserve astronaut in the European Astronaut Corps, becoming the first Spanish woman to achieve this.