Cinthia Sanchez, Ph.D., began working full-time for the Minority Engineering Program as the Outreach and Retention Administrator after earning her Ph.D. degree in Biological Sciences from Purdue University in 2014, where she was responsible for designing, implementing and coordinating outreach and retention programming specifically targeted to underrepresented minority pre-college and undergraduate students, parents, and educators. She was also responsible for developing intervention strategies for academic improvement and success.

Cinthia has extensive research experience in the areas of molecular virology and cell biology. Her doctorate thesis project, "Genetic variations of dengue virus and its role in viral replication and infectivity," has been presented at various national conferences.

During her tenure at Purdue, she also worked as the Lead Coordinator for the Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP) where she developed, coordinated and engaged in activities that focused on outreach, recruitment, and retention of pre-college and undergraduate underrepresented students. She also successfully built partnerships with internal faculty, staff, and administrators, as well as other academic institutions nationwide and played an instrumental role in doubling the number of applicants to over 1,000 students by co-creating marketing strategy, forming partnerships with and visiting other institutions, and representing the program at conferences.

Cinthia also has more than six years of teaching experience at Purdue University, teaching courses such as Lab View, Exploration of Protein Structure and Macromolecules, and Anatomy and Physiology. She also served and continues to mentor underrepresented students from Purdue University and Puerto Rico. 

Cinthia was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She received her B.S. degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Puerto Rico-Aguadilla.