Dr. Cress earned a doctoral degree in biochemistry from the University of Arizona. She studied the biochemistry of DNA replication at Stanford University in Dr. Robert Lehman’s laboratory; peptide chemistry at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and developmental biology at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She joined the UA faculty rising through the ranks to become a Professor with tenure in Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Radiation Oncology. She was one of eleven founding faculty members of the UA Cancer Center and the Cancer Biology Graduate Program. She currently serves as Deputy Dean for Research and Academic Affairs at the UA College of Medicine.