Cristina Marchetti is a theoretical physicist intrigued by the dynamics that govern the behavior of active matter. She has been a theorist in this field since coming to the U.S. from Italy in 1978 to study “systems far from equilibrium” in her Ph.D. research at the University of Florida. In 1987 she joined the faculty of Syracuse University, where she was awarded the Kenan professorship in 2005. Over the years she has convened conferences bringing together biologists, engineers, mathematicians and physics to advance the theory of active matter. In early 2014 she was co-organizer of a four-month program on active systems at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) at U.C. Santa Barbara. Marchetti is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the AAAS and was awarded the 2013 Simons Foundation Fellowship in Theoretical Physics. She has served as chair of the Syracuse physics department and of KITP’s Advisory Board and Steering Committee and is currently associate director of the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute.