Cristina Yang is a researcher, chief medical officer, and director of cardiothoracic surgery at the Klausman Institute for Medical Research and formerly a cardiothoracic surgery fellow at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. She was raised in Beverly Hills, California and is a graduate of Smith College. She earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from University of California, Berkeley, and she earned her M.D. from Stanford University, where she graduated first of her class. She did her internship and residency at Seattle Grace Hospital (later Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital). She is best friends with Meredith Grey. She was engaged to Preston Burke, until he left her at the altar. Eventually, she met Owen Hunt, and married him. They ultimately divorced but later kissed, leading to a post-divorce relationship that lasted until Owen bonded with Ethan Dawson and Cristina realized he needed to be a father. Cristina was raised Jewish, but only believes in science and is a strong atheist.

Cristina is incredibly focused and driven (even more so than the others) and is always excited about the chance to scrub in on a surgery. Extremely competitive, she is not above stealing and hijacking patients if it means getting in on an exciting surgery. Cristina has excellent surgical skills, and is the intern with the most medical knowledge. However, she has difficulties conveying her feelings and dislikes being touched by anyone, including her mother. She also has a poor bedside manner and finds it hard to empathize with most patients.

Cristina values logic and practical thinking above emotional reasoning, but has undergone several emotional situations since becoming an intern. She has been described as cold, cut-throat and hardcore, which she defines as her "edge" and has helped her during her intership but has caused emotional problems in relationships such as with Burke and George who describes her as a "robot". Because of the traumatic experience of watching her father die, Cristina is unable to handle the emotional loss from the thought of losing her loved ones. While she initially grappled with the concept of expressing her feelings, Cristina has gradually become more comfortable with sharing her inner thoughts. Nevertheless, she is still considered the least emotional of all the interns.

OldC

Old Cristina.

Despite her strong personality, when Meredith was unconscious after falling into the water during the ferry crisis, Cristina fled after she realized she could not deal with the fact that her "person" was dying. Burke encouraged her to confront her feelings, and she burst into the trauma room and insisted that the doctors try to revive Meredith again. Meredith soon woke up, and an overwhelmed Cristina happily told Meredith that she was getting married to Burke, and Meredith was the one person she wanted to tell.

Izzie tells Cristina about her cancer, and asks her not to tell anyone else. Cristina pulls every favor she possibly can and sets her up with the best surgical oncologist in Washington state, but Izzie blows it off, annoying Cristina. When confronted, Izzie is apathetic about the cancer, which makes Cristina wonder why she told her. While helping Izzie, Cristina becomes increasingly distracted on the day of her solo surgery and eventually told an OR of Izzie's illness, including Bailey and Alex.

Cristina is a very talented doctor, graduating first in her class from Stanford, she was a straight 'A' student throughout college, and she has an exceptional knowledge of surgery and medicine, with an expressed interest in cardiothoracic surgery.