RESEARCH
Itziar Cenzano, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Researcher at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), specializing in computational biology and bioinformatics. Dr. Cenzano’s research combines biological expertise with advanced computational methods to investigate complex disease biology. Her research primarily focuses on single-cell RNA transcriptomics, and multi-omics integration to identify the regulatory mechanisms driving the development and progression of hematologic malignancies.
Dr. Cenzano has extensively explored the cellular and molecular landscape of the bone marrow microenvironment under physiological conditions such as homeostasis and aging, as well as in pathological states including myelodysplastic syndrome, acute myeloid leukemia, and multiple myeloma. Her research incorporates comparative analyses across different biological systems, including human and mouse models, to uncover conserved and divergent mechanisms involved in hematopoietic regulation and malignant transformation.
Currently, Dr. Cenzano is coordinating projects focused on the role of linker histones in hematopoiesis and the epigenetic regulation of multiple myeloma disease progression. She is also implementing integrative multi-omics approaches to study malignant plasma cells in light chain amyloidosis, aiming to define their molecular phenotypes and therapeutic vulnerabilities. In parallel, she is reconstructing gene regulatory networks to support the development of inference models that capture context-specific regulation in both normal and diseased hematopoietic cells.

BIOGRAPHY
Itziar Cenzano earned her Ph.D. in Applied Medicine and Biomedicine from the University of Navarra, following an MSc in Biomedical Research and a BSc in Biochemistry from the same institution. She began her postdoctoral training at CIMA, where she led computational analyses of the bone marrow niche to uncover its role in hematologic disease progression. In 2024, she joined KAUST as a postdoctoral researcher to continue her work on hematopoietic malignancies using single-cell multi-omics technologies and expanding her toolkit by implementing machine learning and deep learning tools for omics data analysis. She also plays an active role in mentoring Ph.D. and master’s students, fostering growth in computational biology and translational hematology.
Her research contributes to elucidating the regulatory networks and cellular dynamics within the hematopoietic system. She has co-authored several peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals, and has presented her findings at international conferences, including ASH and EHA, where she has received multiple distinctions. Driven by a passion to decode the intricate biology of blood cancers, she is committed to advancing targeted treatment strategies and improving our understanding of disease progression and microenvironmental dynamics through integrative computational approaches and collaborative projects.