ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona (UB) and external lecturer at the CSH Complexity Science Hub Vienna, she holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the UB and a Master's degree in Financial Mathematics from the Centre for Research in Mathematics (CRM). She did postdoctoral stays at Indiana University (USA), the EPFL (Switzerland) and the IFISC Institute (Spain). She returned to Barcelona in 2009 with the recognition of a Ramón y Cajal contract.

Serrano received the Outstanding Referee Award from the American Physical Society and is a member of the editorial board of the journal APS Physical Review Research. She is a founding member of Complexity, the Catalan network for the study of complex systems, and a promoter and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the UB Institute of Complex Systems (UBICS). She researches the fundamental principles that characterise the structure, function and evolution of real-world complex networks, from the Internet to the brain. In 2021, she was a member of the jury of the Ciutat de Barcelona Awards.